GM Kelly McCrimmon Drops A Great Promo About Vegas and LTIR

Everyone is talking about the Vegas Golden Knights stealing the headlines at the NHL Trade Deadline. You can call them the “Show Stoppers” of the NHL. However, there are a lot of people complaining about how Golden Knights General Manager Kelly McCrimmon went out of it by using long-term injury reserve (LTIR) space.

The Golden Knights added Noah Hanifin, Anthony Mantha, and Tomas Hertl at the deadline. Again, the Golden Knights are improving their team now and in the future.

McCrimmon and his team understand the CBA and use the rules to their advantage. It’s like in wrestling: use the Five Count on a rope break to inflict a little more damage. The heel wrestler goes up right to the limit to their advantage. It’s the same in this case.

Kelly McCrimmon joined TSN Radio in Toronto and laid an excellent promo on why his team did not break any rules to keep a competitive team on the ice.

Full Press Hockey Transcription***

Host: “Kelly, We know you’ve taken some heat for the way you use the long-term injury reserve rules to your advantage here in being able to make the cap room to acquire these players, and I know you’ve hit back and said hey, this is not something we plan, you know, Mark Stone has a lacerated spleen and we can’t exactly predict the timing of that injury and that’s fair enough, but do you think that you know these rules need to be looked at when it comes to the league level?

Because it is people do raise eyebrows that hey, you know, Kicherov didn’t play all season, and suddenly he’s ready for game one of a playoff, and, you know, Tampa goes on to win a Stanley Cup. It does seem like a loophole is being used here. Is that loophole need to be closed in your mind, or how do you see it?”

Kelly McCrimmon: “Differently? You know, I think that you know, I don’t feel that people are disappointed with what we did. I think they’re disappointed with the rule that let that happen. And I guess, just sort of a few observations: we’ve had the most injuries in the NHL in the last three years.

For the last two years, Mark Stone has had unrelated injuries and has missed the final three months of our season. So we’re playing without our captain, who’s the heart and soul of our hockey club that is clearly making it more challenging for our team. The rules are designed so that if you lose a player for in excess of 10 games and 24 days, you can put him on to long-term, long-term injury and replace that player.

You have to always be cap compliant, which, in our case, Shea Theodore missed, I believe, 35 or 38 games, but because it was during the season, it wasn’t that we were able to go in and replace that player. Because we knew Sea would eventually be coming back. on our cap. Jack Eichel missed 20 games and seven or eight weeks of hockey, but again, we knew he was coming back. 

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In Mark’s situation with a lacerated spleen which is currently why he’s out of the lineup, itt’s a little bit different in that we don’t know when he’s coming back other than we know. It’s not going to be for some time, so that’s why the possibility of replacing him was there for us. 

And then I guess, with that, it’s doing our job well to take advantage of that. And I think, I would say to you that we played 22 Stanley Cup Playoff games last year and winning the Stanley Cup. We never had a salary cap over $82.5 million in the entire playoffs last year. So this wasn’t a case where we were operating with a $95 million payroll

But I think the other thing to worth mentioning the collective bargaining agreement is where these rules come from. So it’s collectively bargained between the Players Association and the NHL. This isn’t something that next week at the General Manager’s meetings we can have a vote and change. It’s collectively bargained, so it isn’t going to change. And I think that the other thing that’s really happened with the pandemic with the flat cap is more and more teams have used LTIR; I believe there were 16/18 teams this year that went into LTIR.

Right where you guys are with the Leafs, I believe utilized it quite extensively, but also the trades you see. Just this past trade deadline. Anytime players get traded with 50% of the salary being retained by the trading club or the player going through a broker, which happens more and more. That player ends up on his final destination at a cap hit at 25%, and fans don’t seem to have a problem with that. And yet, you can take a deal you can take a $6 million player and put them on your lineup for just over a million dollars if you do it that way.

So those are teams that are being creative to try to put the best team on the ice that they can. No one broke any rules to retain transactions or to use a broker. They’re using the rules that we have in place to try to do the best job they can for their hockey team. This is another example of that.” 

Kelly McCrimmon basically said he did nothing wrong and let the fans that are complaining there is nothing to complain about.