Thread: What happens to player contracts ?

Originally Posted by DeaderFan

What interests me is how they handle longer term contracts if the owners get their 5-year limits on contracts. Does it affect contracts already in force? If so how? Lets say you have a guy who has already played 4 or more years of his long-term contract. Throw in a "lost year" if we don't play this season. Now when we do play again, how long will this guy still be under contract, or is he out of contract because he's already exceeded 5 years?

In the past lockout, the year expired off the contracts. So if a player had 3 years left on his contract when the lockout started, he had 2 when they resumed play.

In your scenario about a guy who has played 4 out of 5 years on his contract, if they go the same way they did as the last lockout, he would be a UFA. Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry are perfect examples of this. This season was supposed to be the final ones of their contract. If the lockout lasts the season, UFA eligibility doesn't change, and they let the years off the contracts expire, they would be UFAs whenever a new CBA is reached.

Originally Posted by DeaderFan

OK lets forget about whether the "lost year" issue for a minute. How about the guy who has a 10 year contract and has alread played 5 years of it prior to the lockout. With the league intending to limit all contracts to a maximum of 5 years, is this guy now a free agent or does he still have 5 years left? Seems like there will have to be some kind of plan for this situation.

Odds are those contracts will be grandfathered in. Existing contracts will be ok, but new contracts signed after the day the CBA is signed would be subject to those limits. Let's use Doughty's 8 year $56 mil contract as an example. He's served one year, if the lockout kicks another year off, he would have 6 years left on the deal. It would be punishing teams and players to void those contracts and make the players UFAs. The teams for potentially causing them to lose players sooner than they planned. Doughty is also one of those few players where his contract escalates towards the back end. His salary (not cap hit) would have been $6.5 million this year and up to $7.65 mil in year 8. Doughty wouldn't have signed an escalating contract and given up some upfront money if he thought the last 3 years of the deal would end up void.

Originally Posted by Toothless

It's a wasted year. If the season is lost Penner will be a FA.

Wrong if season is lost contracts are moved to the following year. Contracts that expire in 2013 now expire in 2014

Originally Posted by amacontent

Wrong if season is lost contracts are moved to the following year. Contracts that expire in 2013 now expire in 2014

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'm pretty sure Toothless is correct. Valeri Bure signed a 1 season contract with the Kings. That season happened to be the cancelled season, and Bure never played for the Kings. Also, I think something in the new CBA, if there every is one, would figure this issue out.

Originally Posted by LOSTcauseZERO

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I'm pretty sure Toothless is correct. Valeri Bure signed a 1 season contract with the Kings. That season happened to be the cancelled season, and Bure never played for the Kings. Also, I think something in the new CBA, if there every is one, would figure this issue out.

Pretty sure that's because he was injured and retired or something.

everything I find says that it will be a lost season:

http://www.thehockeynews.com/article...ontracts.html:

Hey Adam. I’m interested in finding out what happened to contracts in the 2004-05 lockout year. Was a year of players' contracts burned that season or did they just continue with the same number of years remaining on the contract as if a year hadn't elapsed?

As a long-suffering Canadiens fan, I'm wondering if there is a silver lining in a potential lost season. Presumably, it would depend on the new CBA, but if the season is lost and a year of the players' contracts were to be erased, we would be one step closer to that happy day when Scott Gomez and the other terrible contracts from the Bob Gainey/Pierre Gauthier era (Andrei Markov, Tomas Kaberle, Rene Bourque) might be behind us and we can be serious about winning for a change. Thanks.
Mike Ponting, Edmonton

Hey Mike,

All player contracts in a lockout year count just as they would if games were happening. So yes, you lop a year off all the contracts you’ve noted if the NHL lost a full season. That would leave one season remaining on the contracts of Gomez, Brian Gionta, Markov and Kaberle. In a best-case scenario for at least Gomez and Kaberle, a cancelled season could be followed by a long-rumored amnesty buyout opportunity and one or both veterans may have played their last game as a Hab. Awful price the sport has to pay to get there, though.

Here's that TSN article I referenced (and it's also what AWL said above):

Legal Look: Do players lose contract year on a lost season?

If a full season is lost to a lockout, a player loses that entire year on his contract even though no hockey is ever played. That means that a lost year does not somehow carry over to the following year. The year is gone; the money is gone.

Originally Posted by SmytheKing

Pretty sure that's because he was injured and retired or something.

See, that's what I was thinking. I thought maybe he could've gone to play in Europe or Russia or something. That's why I said I'm not 100% sure, because he did completely disappear after the lockout.