NEWARK, NJ – On the ice the story was simple enough, Devils picked up their first win of the season. Martin Brodeur picked up his 110th career shutout and superstar signing Ilya Kovalchuk scored his first goal of the season in a 1-0 overtime win against the Sabres. Off the ice, the clouds continued to circle around the Devils shortened roster storm.
It was second time in less than a week New Jersey had taken to the ice with less than the league minimum 18 skaters (plus two goalies). With summer signing Anton Volchenkov, sidelined after taking a puck to the face against Washington, and Bryan Rolston out injured as well as Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond serving a one game suspension on Monday, it left New Jersey on rather sticky grounds – with no cap room and several unenviable options to remedy the situation, the Devils cited the ‘emergency situation’ clause which allows teams to skate with less than 18 players as their ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.
The simple merits of the ‘emergency situation’ clause are easy to grasp – after all, if an East coast club is playing back-to-back games in California and lose a player to injury it could be a bit of a stretch to get a player from, say, an Illinois or New York based affiliate to Los Angeles or Anaheim in the space of 24 hours! Essentially, it lets common sense prevail in these rare occurrences and allows a team to skate a man or two down in extenuating circumstances, whilst appropriate moves are made to remedy the situation.
Thing is, the Devils’ situation is not purely down to an unlucky injury in the middle of an extended road trip hundreds or thousands of miles from home. New Jersey simply did not, or does not, have the cap space to make any roster adjustments without making a trade or sending someone down, thus risking losing the player on waivers.
This is not the first time a club has used the ‘emergency situation’ to save their bacon after making a mess its cap math. Calgary played the final five games of the 2008/09 regular season with a shortened roster after miscalculating their cap space after making several deadline day deals. And whilst the recent announcement Brian Rolston will be out for 4-6 weeks with a sports hernia will offer New Jersey the chance to move the veteran on to the Injured Reserve and free up a chunk of cap space, question marks remain over the handling of the situation.
For the best part the minimum roster rules are in place to stop teams effectively short changing the league, and perhaps more importantly the fans, by turning up with two lines. As someone based in the UK I’ve seen first hand the effects a shortened bench can have on a team’s performance and the quality of a game. This isn’t a situation where a coach actively decides to cut down to two lines to chase a game or protect a lead, this is teams physically turning up with only two lines worth of players. And frankly it does diminish the on ice product, as 10 pairs of legs are quickly worn down and lose the vigor and energy they started the game with.
Devils’ situation isn’t so much about a diminished product – in all fairness they put in a decent showing against Pittsburgh. It wasn’t a performance affected by being a couple of guys short anyway; they were simple beaten by the better team that night.
However it could be argued it is about the spirit of the game and, perhaps more seriously, another way of circumventing the salary cap.
The ‘spirit of the thing’, to paraphrase Dickie Dunn from the movie Slapshot, seems to be very important to the NHL. The summer saw ‘uproar’ over long term, front loaded deals and various conversations about exploiting loopholes in the CBA and teams/players not acting in the ‘spirit’ of the agreement took place. And of course, New Jersey’s mega deal with Ilya Kovalchuk was front and centre in that debate.
I heard one fan argue that New Jersey’s recent roster juggling was no worse than some bottom end teams purposefully looking to keep their payroll down. Difference is, these bottom end teams are still meeting the NHL’s requirements. Take the New York Islanders – missing their best D man and a top 6 winger until around February, and their best forward in the short term, they were still inside the cap floor AND put out a full roster. And given their hard working win over the Rangers on Monday, they are clearly capable of putting up a fight and battling every night.
While New Jersey are still competing, they aren’t playing within the rules which everyone else manages to abide by.
The mega deal which brought Kovalchuk to Newark was always likely to cause a few cap headaches for the Devils. The first deal was rejected by the NHL amid accusations that it was designed to circumvent the cap. Few argued with these accusations and New Jersey were subsequently punished for it.
And yet here we are again. Even with the new and approved deal to keep Kovalchuk in a Devils uniform, the deal has to be contributing to the Devils current situation. While any other team would look to their minor league affiliates and call someone up, New Jersey are so hard against the cap they were left with a choice of moving/losing a player, going over the cap or playing ‘short’ in order to ‘get by’ whilst their downed team members recovered and Letourneau-Leblond served his ban.
As previously mentioned, with Rolston out for at least a month New Jersey have been given some form of a life line. But the entire incident stirred the NHLPA in to an investigation, as well leaving fans wondering what will happen next in Newark and perhaps more importantly whether this will be the last time we see a team dodging the bullet by invoking the ‘emergency situation’ clause.
Hopefully lessons will be learnt, if only for the integrity of the game’s sake – dubious situations such as this must be avoided!
Contact the author: rob.mcgregor@prohockeynews.com
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