Hockey Know-It-All

So pretty much a face off only occurs in a specific end because of a stoppage of play from say a penalty, or the goalie covering the puck. Something like a goal or the start of the period, the puck is always dropped at the center ice face off dot. That means that when a face off occurs in either end, it happens after something that has some sort of direction to it.

What I mean is, if the puck is covered by a goalie, the goalie will face the shot from the right or the left, and so the face off occurs on that side. Same with a penalty. If a puck goes over the glass or a fight starts or what have you, the side of the ice that happens is where thef face off will be. Same with icings.

It all comes down to which side of the goalie the stoppage of play occurred on. Although I am not entirely sure it makes a huge difference which side. Yes there is the difference between blocker and glove side for the goalie which could factor into it. But i've never seen a team argue for an opposite faceoff dot.

No problem! I love answering these questions.

Corsi measures shot attempt differential for each player and/or team. A shot attempt is basically any time a player takes a shot with the intention of scoring a goal, regardless if it is blocked, if it misses the net, hits a post, or it is saved by the goalie. Therefore a shot attempt differential, or corsi, is the amount of shot attempts made by a team, minus the shot attempts made against the team. The formula can be written as follows

Corsi For (CF) = Shot attempts for: Shots+blocks+misses

Corsi Against (CA) = Shot attempts against: Shots+blocks+misses

Corsi = CF-CA

source

a depth forward would refer to a player that is not in the top 6 forwards on your team. Generally your top two lines are going to be your main forwards. In general the top line gets the most minutes and the second line gets the second most minutes and so on. But it is not rare for the second line to replace the top line every other game, during games, or even have them just completely swap for an extended period of time. This would mean, that a team that also has a good 3rd and 4th line has “good forward depth” and a player that is on the 3rd or 4th line and playing well would then be a good depth forward. 

Well first, a one year deal is a contract that only lasts for one season. So in this case a one year deal would be only for the 2019-2020 season and after that the player would need to sign another one.

A two way refers to the fact that the salary changes depending on what league they play in. That means a player may make 2 million in the NHL but 60,000 in the AHL. This would allow a team an easier time if they wanted to move a player down to the AHL because then they’re not spending 2 million dollars on a player that plays in their minor system.

They’re essentially the same. Cap Hit is the exact number against the cap while the AAV stands for average annual value. since the cap hit is the average of the total contract, the AAV operates as the same thing.

The only time there really is a difference is in ELCs where a player can earn bonuses. The AAV for those in their ELC calculate for performance bonuses so an AAV would appear larger than the cap hit. For example, this is Auston Matthews cap break down during his ELC:

You can see that his AAV equals his cap hit plus his bonuses. Now bonuses end up going against the cap the next year but do not count as part of the original cap hit of the contract. We can compare this to Auston’s upcoming contract which looks like this, and no long counts as an ELC:

as you can see his AAV and cap hit are the same as he no longer gets any bonuses. 

A lockout happens every now and then and, especially under Gary Bettman, is expected to keep happening.

Essentially, a lockout is when the two governing bodies of the NHL cannot agree on the CBA. The CBA is a document that basically governs the NHL, it stands for Collective Bargaining Agreement, and lays out how profits from the league are dispersed between both sides, what benefits players get, what their rights are, how contracts are structured, Roster size, cap space, waivers, essentially everything that goes into running the NHL. For example before the last lock out in 2013, all players had a roommate on road trips and now only players on their ELC will have a roommate on road trips. 

Now the two governing bodies of the NHL are the Owners, represented by Gary Bettman, and the Players, represented by the Players Association (NHLPA). Obviously Bettman is interested in getting the best deal for his clients, the Owners, while the PA is interested in getting the best deal for the players. This is the part where I think people get confused with the commissioners role. Bettman is a lawyer and he is hired by the Owners of NHL teams, who are essentially the owners of the NHL. If you consider the NHL like any other business, it has 31 separate pieces that need to be bought to be owned. But you cannot have 31 people trying to make a decision, when half of them don’t even like each other. So Bettman’s job is that he is essentially the Teams Owners lawyer and he represents what they believe and want. Very rarely does he have the ability himself to make any decision based on personal beliefs, he’s mostly just a talking head for the owners. 

Now the NHL has a history, especially under Bettman, of being very... stubborn and so lockout have happened quite a bit under him. There was the total lockout in 2005, and the partial lockout in 2013. and so the reason another one may happen is in September of 2020, there is a opt out in this current CBA, and if either side takes it and another CBA is not introduced before the season starts, then a lockout happens. There is no “this will definitely happen” or “this will definitely not happen,” because we just don’t know. Everyone in a decision making position has said they don’t expect a lockout but a lockout isn’t something you go in with the mindset of getting, so there’s no way to know if that promise means anything. 

I think the biggest problem with the current CBA is that the players agreed to it in a rush, meaning that for whatever reason they feel that the CBA is not equal going forward. Essentially the players, because they didn’t want a total work stoppage, agreed to what they had but mdae the league put in the opt out for 2020. This to me says, that the league knows they got away with something and that the players are going to insist on getting more this upcoming CBA. and like I said, the NHL is very stubborn so how likely they are to get that is sort of up in the air. 

So be ready I guess,

Buyouts happen in two different scenarios. I’ll cover the most simple one first. and unfortunately involve a lot of Math which is not my strong suit I will be honest. 

Essentially there are two types of buyouts. A Compliance buyout is very rare because a team has to be given them by the league during certain situations. For instance each team got two compliance buyouts following the 2013 lockout for contracts signed before the lockout. Compliance buyouts cost the teams a percentage of the contracts value that they had to pay directly to the player but did not count against the cap. 

A more general buyout can happen each season between June 15th (or the SCF, whicever is later) and june 30th. These contracts you still need to pay a part of the remaining contract value but in this case it does go against the cap. To determine the cap hit you need to do math and it changes each year. But the general idea is that you end up taking on a significantly smaller cap hit but for twice the remaining length of the contract. So a team doing this will still have problems in the future but the idea is that it’ll be easier for them to sign new contracts if they only have 2 miliong against the cap than 6 million. but then you also are wasting 2 million of cap space on a place you do not have anymore. So, in my opinion, they’re a last resort. 

I hope that answered your question. If you want the actual formulaic breakdown of how much money against the cap a buyout is, you can read here. I tried like 7 different times to explain it but i haven’t taken a math class in like 5 years.

so after December 1st an RFA even if they are signed cannot play for that season. So thats considered the deadline. I would start worrying around training camp so like august. But it also depends on who you’re talking about. RFA’s should be signed before free agency starts which is july 1st. Like if everything goes smoothly that’s best case scenario. but the timeline for worry changes from RFA to RFA.

Okay so LTIR is one of the more confusing things in regards to cap space and I’m getting a lot of my information from Here. It is kind of confusing so i’ll try my best to simplify it a bit.

Essentially LTIR is only used when needed. So if a team is under the salary cap a player’s contract who is on LTIR will count towards the cap, but once that team goes above the cap the LTIR comes off the books. Instead of it being like you have 5 million extra dollars it’s more like getting a zone of relief of the Cap. if that makes sense. it operates basically the same way as getting an extra 5 million but is applied differently. This means you’ll see teams with 10 million in cap space and no LTIR used even though they have a player on LTIR, that’s because they have 10 million total in cap space already and don’t need that LTIR relief just yet. 

Now of course that 5 mil number changes depending on the cap hit of the player on LTIR. Because the relief is just the cap space on the players contract. 

An RFA is a restricted free agent. This means that their rights are owned by a team and even if they do not have a contract with that team that’s the only team that they can play for. This means an RFA could also be traded if they don’t have a contract because their rights can be traded between teams. RFA status is not one that a player chooses but instead has until they reach certain markers in their career. A player must be in the NHL for 7 years until they are no longer an RFA or be 27 years or older. So if you play your first NHL season at 18 then you’ll lose RFA status when you’re 25 but if you play your first season in the NHL at like 25, you’ll only have two years of RFA status.

Now UFA status is what you get automatically when you lose RFA status. UFA stands for Unrestricted Free Agent and essentially means your rights don’t belong to any team and you are free to go and sign with any team you’d like if you are no longer under contract with a team. A UFA has a lot more freedom and they are usually paid a lot more because the player has a lot more bargaining power than when they were an RFA. 

A conditional pick means that it only is included if the condition is met. So if it’s a conditional first round pick that means if the condition is not met then the first round pick does not exist. HOwever, most of the time It’d be something like a second round pick that could turn into a conditional first. So if the conditions are not met is remains a second round pick.

A two way centre is a centre that plays well defensively and offensively. A centre is traditionally a more defensively minded forward role so a lot of centres are considered “two way” But there are some big names that are specifically in that category: Patrice Bergeron, Aleksander Barkov, Ryan O’Reilly, Jonathan Toews, etc. 

Each NHL team only has a certain amount of money that they can spend on players. This is to keep really rich teams from throwing money at every super star while poor teams can’t get anybody. This amount of money is called the Salary Cap. Cap Space is the amount of money you have available to you to spend.

Next Season the salary cap will be about 81.5 million dollars I believe. So if we look at a team lke the Anaheim Ducks, they currently pay around 71.5 million dollars to their players in total, so this means that for the next season they have 10 million dollars that they can use to get another player or multiple players. That 10 million is the Ducks cap space. It’s different from every team and changes almost day to day but it’s a very important asset to have because wasting all your cap space leaves a team “Cap strapped” or basically stuck with the players they have. 

Goal differential is a team stat that is basically how many goals the team scored as a whole minus how many goals the team let in as a whole. This can be a season stat or a game stat.

For instance if the Bruins are playing the leafs, and the leafs score 3 goals and the Bruins score 4 then the Bruins goal differential is 1 for that game while the leafs goal differential is -1 for that game.

Now if the Bruins scored 150 goals in the season and let in 140. than their goal differential for the season is a 10. 

Players will have individual goal differentials as well but that stat is called Plus Minus usually indicated by +/- on stat sheets.

A player has to play at least 41 regular season games (or half the season) or they must play one game in the stanley cup final. That being said each team gets an alloted amount of spaces on the cup to add whoever they want, I think it’s like 4. So the backup goalie usually gets pt on there automatically even if they don’t meet that criteria.

So the short answer is yes the 27-or-7 rule is the only way of becoming a UFA it doesn’t really have much to do with the length of contracts. A contract might change depending on whether or not the team wants to deal with an RFA or a UFA at the end of the contract and so that might make the money go up or down. But a player has to either be 27 or been in the league for 7 years to become a UFA.