Is Marc Savard on the move?
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| Associated Press |
An interesting rumor
has been going around that Marc Savard could be on the move this summer.
Elliot Friedman was on Calgary’s
Sportsnet 690 and reported the following (Transcript by Nichols on Hockey):
“One of the things they’re looking at is trading Marc Savard. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar, Marc Savard is never going to play again, unfortunately. He has a concussion issue. However, he has two years left on his contract. The cap hit is just over $4 million. I think it’s $4.07 million. However, his actual cash the next two years is $525,000 and it’s going to be picked up mostly by insurance. I think about 60 percent of it is going to be paid by insurance. So if you’re a team that gets that contract, you’re only going to have to pay about 240,000 of it.
“So that’s a great bargain if you are looking to get to the cap floor. And when I really sat down and did the math – I heard about this on Saturday afternoon. I checked with Peter Chiarelli and he didn’t really want to tell me, but he didn’t deny it either – so I knew it was kind of true.“People will say, ‘Why don’t they just keep him and use it to go on LTI.’
“The reason is in the summer, Marc Savard counts against your cap. You can’t put a guy on Long-Term Injury until the puck drops. In the summer you are allowed as a team to go 10 percent over the cap, but they have a lot of business they have to do, as you said. There’s Dougie Hamilton, there’s Carl Soderberg, there’s a whole bunch of things they have to do."
“And the team that I think we might be talking about here – there’s Buffalo, which is way below, and there’s also Arizona, which is – I don’t know how they’re going to get to the cap floor next year."
“So I wonder if Marc Savard is going to one of these teams, which frees up some room for Boston in the summer and it’s a very cheap way of getting to the salary floor. And that’s right up the... Coyotes alley with what they’re doing next year.”
In other words, this is
another way for teams to manipulate the cap. While the actual money paid to
Savard will be around $240,000, the cap hit for Savard will still be at $4,027,143. The cap floor is the minimum that a team has to spend
(in terms of cap hit) to be compliant with the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
For cash strapped, non-contending teams like the Coyotes, it might make sense
to do such a move, to prevent from overspending on players that won’t really
get them anywhere.
Marc
Savard is a huge supporter for the Boston Bruins and he is not afraid to be
vocal about it. If a trade were to happen, it will be a sad day for Bruins fans
everywhere.
