It is, for now, mostly a subplot in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
You can expect to hear a lot more about the subject, though, if Tampa Bay is able to join the Penguins as the only teams to win consecutive Stanley Cups since Detroit did it in 1997 and 1998.
Lightning GM Julien BriseBois has been accused by some of circumventing the NHL's regular-season salary-cap ceiling of $81.5 million, with Exhibit A being the case of right winger Nikita Kucherov. He had hip surgery and spent the regular season on the Long-Term Injured list, which got Tampa Bay relief from his $9.5 million cap hit.
Kucherov recovered just in time for the Lightning's playoff opener, at which time the cap ceiling no longer was in effect.
He hasn't been out of the lineup since, which is a great thing for Tampa Bay, since Kucherov leads the playoffs in scoring with five goals and 17 assists in 13 games.
BriseBois created more LTI cap space by trading two serviceable players, Cedric Paquette and Brayden Coburn, to Ottawa for two others, Marian Gaborik and Anders Nilsson, whose careers were ended by injuries but who still had time remaining on their contracts.
The NHL investigated the Lightning's moves and determined there had been no cap circumvention.
Indeed, BriseBois was guilty of just one thing:
Taking full advantage of every loophole and wrinkle he could find to create the cap space needed to retain not only every key member of Tampa Bay's 2020 Cup-winning team, but to add defenseman David Savard at the trade deadline.
By the the end of the regular season, Tampa Bay's available cap space barely would have been enough to purchase a nosebleed seat for a playoff game, but since the cap is discarded when the postseason begins, that didn't matter.
And suddenly, a very good team was able to add Kucherov back into its personnel mix.
There have been predictable yelps of outrage from various outposts -- Carolina defenseman Dougie Hamilton said the Hurricanes were eliminated in Round 2 by a team "that's $18 million over the cap" -- but the reality is that Tampa Bay apparently operated within the rules.
Which means the salary-cap rules have to be adjusted if the NHL wants to assure that most discussions during the playoffs deal with the on-ice action, not accounting issues.
Simply extending the regular-season cap regulations into the playoffs wouldn't address the problem, for a number of reasons. (And that's without taking into consideration that players' salaries are paid during the regular season; their only earnings during the postseason come from whatever share they receive of the money their team gets for however long it lasts in the tournament.)
During the regular season, clubs can carry up to 23 players on their active major-league roster, so the team's salary-cap hit on a given day is based on the total of the cap hits of those individuals.
When clubs get into the playoffs, however, they are allowed to have as many players on hand as they want. Because it's important to have capable replacements ready to be plugged in if there are injuries, having a significant number of players who stay relatively sharp by practicing is imperative.
However, that arrangement effectively precludes applying regular-season rules to the playoffs, because it's unrealistic -- OK, ridiculous -- to expect a team that can be cap-compliant while carrying 22 or 23 players to also slip in under the ceiling when it has 30 or 35 guys hanging around.
There is, however, a compromise that would limit the ability of teams to exploit loopholes in the current system: Compel teams to deploy a lineup for games whose members do not exceed the regular-season cap ceiling.
That affords clubs some wiggle room, since only 20 players can dress for a game, compared to the 23 that can be carried on the regular-season roster.
It would, however, negate any benefit teams get from adding "dead" salaries, like those of Gaborik and Nilsson, simply to swell their Long-Term Injured list while the cap ceiling is in effect during the regular season. Running up that number then makes it possible to re-sign or acquire players who otherwise could not be squeezed under the cap.
Under the current setup, teams need only worry about the regular season. Enforcing the ceiling on game-night lineups during the playoffs could have an impact on a lot of personnel decisions made before the postseason arrives.
While it would not be fair to clubs that have added dead salaries with the intent of generating additional cap space during the regular season to retroactively invalidate such moves -- after all, they surrendered assets in good faith to make it happen -- the benefits of doing so shouldn't carry over into the playoffs.
It isn't fair to other clubs to have a wealthy owner -- be it Jeffrey Vinik in Tampa, Buffalo's Terry Pegula, Ron Burkle of the Penguins or anyone else -- be able to splurge on contracts of injured players who have no chance of contributing on the ice, simply to create the cap space to overload his team's roster for the playoffs.
Winning a Cup is enough of a challenge already. Especially when you don't have a world-class talent who can go directly from LTI to the top of the scoring race.
