Transcript of Should The NHL Add A Mid-Season Buyout Window? | SDP

How unhinged would an in-season buyout window be? The temptation for GMs to make a panic move to try and save their season or jobs would be irresistible. Colin, this is. This, from an entertainment value standpoint, is an absolutely fantastic idea. Gary Bettman, I think, would rather die than implement this. He has done his darndest, rightly or wrongly, to save NHL teams from themselves and make this league profitable. And you are basically going to... This isn't a get-out-of-jail free card. This is a put yourself into jail for free card. This is a spend money like a lunatic for free card This is instead of trading first-round picks, which are at very least not money, you're going to blow millions of dollars to lose in six games in the second round instead of five. I don't think this will ever happen, but I love your chutzpa.

I think it also probably favors richer teams, which is why they'll never do it.

Yeah. It becomes a cheat code if you have the money to just buy out guys all the time. Yeah.

So I think that that's probably why, but it's a great idea. And the PWHL has it. Do they really? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've got a buyout window where they can just cut people. I didn't know that. It was pretty aggressive.

For the sake of people's families, too, I'm not a supportive order of the NFL model where you could cut non-guaranteed contracts. I think probably just keep it out what it is in terms of buy-out window.

But in the NFL, when you're cut, there's just like, Okay, take care. There's no payout?

No, it's non-guaranteed. They could literally just cut you and you're done.

Bye. What is the point of a contract?

Non-guaranteed? It says, If you're here for this amount of time, this is how much you are going to make during that amount of time, but you are not guaranteed to be here for that amount of time.

Yeah, It's because the NFL broke the players union in the '80s. It's fucked up. The NHL probably could have had that when they broke the players union 20 years ago, but they just didn't get it. Just a dumb off. Yeah. Okay, pass it over. All All right. Now you're ready. I'm picking from the top. You guys both went from the bottom. I'm going easy here. All right. Oh, this looks like a big one. This looks like it might be a paragraph. What time was it written? Yo, this is a thesis from Hogwash. Hey, all. Long time, first time. Love the show. With bad hits and suspensions in the news again, as they are every year, I was wondering what you thought about a possible rule change. Briefly, if a player is suspended, the offending team has to play with a shortened bench for the duration of the suspension. To To use a recent example, as much as it pains me to think of it, the least would have had to play with 17 skaters for the five games that Reeves was suspended. My theory is that teams would work quickly internally to train their players to not make reckless plays, as being down a skater for a number of games is a real competitive disadvantage.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Keep up the fabulous work.

No one is going for that.

Nobody wants this.

No one wants that.

I think it's a cool idea. I do. I respect the creativity.

It's funny. Yeah, But you're thinking about it from a sporting perspective, which the NHL never thinks about anything from that. It's business. You're like, Hey, what's fair? Okay, let's throw that in the trash because that's not how they think about anything. Teams are like, I own a multibillion dollar team, and I have to play at a disadvantage because of the acts of one of my employees.

Or because of your arbitrary NHL player safety. You imagine how much scrutiny player safety would be under at that A hundred %.

Exactly. You're not doing that. The players union would lose their mind because every time a guy gets suspended, guess what you got to do? Replace them. A guy gets called up and he's got to pay dues and hooray. It's great. Yeah, literally, none of the relevant parties are going for this.

You lose that extra job that somebody gets in there. Because the NHL, they rescind suspensions all the time. From the The amount of time a guy suspended and he serves that time to when Gary can find the time to sit down in a boardroom and renegotiate whatever the suspension should be. There could be an instance where you play shorthanded for 10 games, and then they're like, You know what? We're going to reduce that suspension from 10 to 6. Then you played those extra four games shorthanded for suspension. That doesn't commute here. That happened with him.

He got his money back, but he'll never get those games back.

Now, imagine on top of that, the team doesn't get those games back for the times they played shorthanded. No. And they lost all of them.

You probably increased your chances of injury, too. No, no one's going to for this.

Now, bad idea. Yeah.