Hypocrisy in the NHL Office? NEVER….

I woke up this morning to an interesting story in the Ottawa Sun by Bruce Garrioch: "'Hawks under microscope, NHL investigating Hossa contract." Apparently, the NHL is not happy with the 12-year, $62.8 million dollar contract Chicago gave to a 30-year old Marian Hossa. Now, on one hand my sentiment is "it's about [expletive deleted] time the NHL stepped in on these mega deals!" On the other hand, I wonder why this particular deal is a red flag, but the not one, but two deals signed by Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland in the last year are fine and dandy in the eyes of the league's boss and perennial idiot-of-the-year candidate, Gary Bettman. The Red Wings, Hossa's previous team oddly enough, signed Henrik Zetterberg to a 12-year, $80.4 million on January 28, 2009 and then signed Johan Franzen to an 11-year, $43.505 million deal on April 11, 2009.

Here's the annual value breakdown for each contract:

Zetterberg (Annual Cap Hit: $6.055 million)

$7.4 million, $7.75 million, $7.75 million, $7.75 million, $7.5 million, $7.5 million, $7.5 million, $7.5 million, $3.35 million, $1.0 million, $1.0 million

Franzen (Annual Cap Hit: $3.955 million)

$5.5 million, $5.0 million, $5.25 million, $5.25 million, $5.0 million, $5.0 million, $5.0 million, $3.5 million, $2.0 million, $1.0 million, $1.0 million

Hossa (Annual Cap Hit: $5.23 million)

$7.9 million, $7.9 million, $7.9 million, $7.9 million, $7.9 million, $7.9 million, $7.9 million, $4.0 million, $1.0 million, $1.0 million, $750,000, $750,000

The NHL might argue that the final four years of the Hossa deal are throwaway years because the cap hit is $5.23 million but the total value is only $3.5 million. Or that the structure allows the contract value to greatly exceed his cap hit for seven years then in the final four years be greatly below. Obviously, the Wings used similar structures but were more subtle in the annual values in relation to the cap hit. But that doesn't make this an apples-to-oranges situation; it's more like a Spartan to Red Delicious situation.

Zetterberg turns 29 this October and Franzen turns 30 in December…making him 11 months younger than Hossa. So, is the Hossa deal offside because he's older than both Red Wing players? Well, according to the NHL's Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly, it's seems to be an issue: "This was the first of the long-term contracts that took a player out past the age 40…" However, there is not real benefit to this argument because a player doesn't hit 40 and get a hell of a lot worse than he was at 39 years old. In fact, the real problem, as Daly points out is "…the value of the contract in its 'out years' was dramatically lower than its early years. We want to know if the possibility of player retirement was ever discussed or even contemplated."

Interesting take, however, that's the whole point of any of these long-term deals: they salary cap hit disappears for the team if the player retires before the end of the contract. If he doesn't, well the team has the option to send the player to the minors and not have the contract count against their salary cap because they signed the deal before the player was 35-years old. That, my friends is circumventing the cap. Of course, the Chicago Blackhawks are guilty of it. So are the Detroit Red Wings and any other team that signs these deals. However, as Al Strachan pointed out Hardcore Hockey Talk after the Zetterberg and Franzen signings, the Wings were able to get around the question of "how likely is it that either player will even be on your roster at 40 years old?" by saying "Well, look at (Chris) Chelios!"

At the time of those contracts, Gary Bettman publicly stated that neither of the Red Wing deals circumvented the Collective Bargaining Agreement. He didn't give any reason why, but one can assume you don't want to step in on the defending Stanley Cup Champions and league darlings. One thing has to be perfectly clear: the Detroit Red Wings are an incredibly well run professional sports franchise. Ken Holland has kept the core of his super power team together longer than any other hockey team in the salary cap era. This team went from spending around $70 million dollars a year on players to being forced to play within the confines of a salary cap system and made the transition smoothly. Their management team also finds more players off the scrap heap and turns them into vital players – and some into stars – than any other team in the league. They also find the loopholes in the CBA faster than any other team and I can't fault them for any of it.

I can, however fault the league. Allowing the Franzen and Zetterberg deals opened up a can of worms. Enter the Chicago Blackhawks. They saw a player in Marian Hossa that they wanted and knew it would take a Franzen/Zetterberg-style deal to get him under contract. So, they crunched the numbers to get an affordable cap hit and made the offer. Hossa signed and at the time, the league approved it. 'Hawks swipe Hossa from Wings. Should be the end of the story; it isn't.

If you look back a month ago, the Red Wings were actually trying to get Hossa on a similar deal. A June 27 story by Anser Khan of mlive.com in Detroit quotes Wings Red Wings General Manager Ken Holland: "If there's a (salary) cap number we think can fit in, we'll sign him. We're prepared to do a long-term deal," The story goes on to say, "Sources said the team is offering Hossa a front-loaded deal in the neighbourhood of $4 million a season."

Now, to get Hossa to that kind of cap hit on a front-loaded, long-term deal, the Wings would have needed to get even more creative than the Blackhawks. The league allowed this situation to happen by allowing teams to extend older players to longer deals. What makes this one different is it was an Unrestricted Free Agent, leading to a bidding war and a substantial overpayment. The NHL can't really blame the Blackhawks for something they allowed to happen in the past.

Remember Daly's question about retirement being negotiated in the deal? Well if it wasn't negotiated in these deals, it's most likely assumed. A league executive tells Garrioch of another league plan: "The NHL is looking to put a damper on these 10-plus-year contracts with throwaway years tacked on at the end," a league executive said last night. "They are building a strong case against Chicago to make an example of them. This issue won't just go away. Lots of other GMs are supporting the league here."

There is a simple solution to this for the NHL and NHLPA: Create a new rule that limits the mega-term deal. I don't necessarily mean abolish the 10-year-or-longer deals; limit who gets them. Here's my crazy idea…

The CBA has a rule in place that buying out or sending players to the minors because of unsavoury contracts signed by players after they turn 35 will count against the salary cap. To work with that rule and not to artificially lower the cap number, teams should only be able to sign players to mega-term contracts up to the year they turn 35.

The reason is quite simple really. The best players in the league generally have their best years between the ages of 23 and 30. Depending on which month a player is born, that could mean seven or eight seasons. Teams can then sign star players to ten- or twelve-year contract and pay the player prime dollars during their prime years while getting a lower cap number. It also means being able to build the team around the superstar by lowering his cap hit. Therefore, the maximum length of a player's contract depends on how many years he has until he turns 35. After that, it's "buyer beware" and teams are a lot smarter when they're forced to face contractual consequences and the rule in place could actually have some teeth.

There are examples of teams doing this already mostly with good results. In Philadelphia, captain Mike Richards signed a deal that pays him gradually more to his peak years and gradually less towards his mid thirties. It is the poster child for what mega-term deals should be and he walks away with $69 million dollars. The mega-term deal is not without its risks. Just as the New York Islanders, who are paying goaltender Rick DiPietro $4.5 million a year for 15 years only to find he has an injury list rivalled only by that of Ken Griffey Jr. It's still buyer beware, but at least under this structure teams would sign players to realistic mega deals, not ones where they expect players to disappear and cap money to open up.

The mega-term deal is just one of the many hypocrisies synonymous with the Gary Bettman NHL. For a great breakdown of the ridiculous situation with the Phoenix Coyotes, check out my friend Scott Tougas' great blog on the subject.