Every week or two…..we at The Program are going to take a look at a hockey term or two and try to put a spin on it that makes more sense to the reader. If it doesn’t do more than just give a better understanding, that is okay too. There are things that I definitely don’t know a lot about with hockey and it doesn’t hurt to learn a little more about them. So….time to take a look.
Waivers (In NHL Terms) — What does it really mean when a player is placed on waivers? Well it is a lot like dangling a carrot to the other 29 NHL teams. The team notifies all the others that this player is available. Basically it is a nice way to try and get a player’s salary off your hands especially if you’re a GM who made a boo-boo and wants to make it all better or to allow a player to move on in good faith. If more than one team goes to claim said player, then the team with the worst record at the time of the claim gets him. Sounds great…right? Well for the GM who just absolved that salary.
What if that player doesn’t get claimed but the GM wants to rid himself of the player in the worst way, do him a favor, or just can’t make a trade? Then there is re-entry waivers where basically a team can claim a player for only half price. It is a lot like a divorce where everything is split down the middle except for the headaches. Really the salary is just split in half and again the team with the worst record will claim the player or if there is a sorta “unwritten” agreement, the other teams will back off from making a claim. It happens more often than not which is why Mark Recchi will have a different uniform by noon tomorrow just for an example.
Now there is an evil twist in the whole re-entry waivers scenario. I wanted to thank The Puck Stops Here for this article. It was nice to know the NHL merely sugar coated the problem and didn’t actually do anything about it. The salary cap has made it such where newer contracts are being made up with interesting provisions…like an NHL only contract for one year and a two-way (NHL and Minors) contract the next or vice versa. The fans are going to see this more in the coming years as GM’S try to find a way to keep NHL caliber players in the league.
So does the waiver and re-entry waiver system really work? The answer to that is yes and no. It works more often than not but from time to time it does fail because no system is really perfect. Just ask the league about schedules some time! Next week we’ll take a look at a few more terms and try our best to make them easier to stomach.
