As the trade deadline approached, the Minnesota Wild had significant interest in former Buffalo Sabres captain Jason Pominville and were willing to give up a lot to get him.
The only problem was that the Wild didn’t have enough cap space to afford the remainder of Pominville’s 2013 cap hit. In the old CBA, fixing that problem would have required some creativity on the part of the general managers. Now it’s a bit simpler.
The Buffalo Sabres agreed to absorb 15% of the Pominville’s remaining cap hit for both this and next season, according to Cap Geek and the Star Tribune.
That helped keep the Wild $100,000 under the cap for the rest of this campaign while also giving them a little extra breather room for the 2013-14 campaign.
Under the new CBA teams can absorb up to 50% of a players’ annual cap hit/salary when the person in question is traded.
Pominville isn’t the first player to be subject to this new rule, but he is nevertheless a high-profile example of a struggling franchise using this tactic to allow a win-now club to stock up talent in a manner that wasn’t quite as feasible before.