How To Offload An Unwanted Salary

Michael Nylander has one of the larger contracts on the Washington Capitals.  He has a salary cap hit of $4.875 million and is signed through the end of the 2010/11 season.  This makes him the third highest paid player on the Capitals (behind Alexander Ovechkin and Mike Green).  However, he has fallen out of favor with his Capitals team.  He only scored nine goals last season and that had the Capitals reconsidering his contract.  The Capitals tried to get Nylander signed in the KHL last summer and failed.  So far this season, they have yet to play Nylander in a game and have sent him to the AHL in Grand Rapids (the Detroit Red Wings affiliate - not their own affiliate) for a conditioning stint.  Conditioning stints can last up to two weeks.  Many expect that Washington does not want him back and hope to have found him a KHL suitor by the end of that period. The salary cap loophole of sending unwanted players to Russia is not new.  It has been exploited in the past, but it shows the NHL’s hypocrisy.  The NHL screams bloody murder when Alexander Radulov is signed by the league, while at the same time trying to send players to the KHL to hide their salary cap hits.