So thanks to fuckhead southern markets, any contract over seven years is now subject to a "salary cap recapture" in which the benefits of frontloading the salary are cancelled back out if a player doesn't play out his contract. Hooray, more dead cap space in the distant future!

So with Hossa, he has a $5.275MM cap hit along with a $7.9MM salary. That means that through three years, the Hawks owe the league $7,875,000--and counting--in dead cap space if Hossa retires before 2021. That hit/pay differential ($2.625MM) is constant through 2016, after which we get into the years that drove the hit down and we stop reaping the benefits.

The paradox here, and another example of why this league is fucking retarded, is that this is intended to punish the teams that tried to circumvent the CBA with years the player never intended to play. However, the accrued cap penalties are spread out over the unfulfilled years of the contract, such that a team is punished more harshly for a player who almost fulfills his entire contract but comes up a year short than a player who bails with five, six years to spare.

Let's say we get rid of Hossa before this season starts and he goes on to play in the NHL through 2016. That means the $7,875,000 the Hawks saved in his three years will be distributed over five years, for a total of $1,575,000 per year. Now, if he goes on to play through 2020 and then he retires, we get hit with the $7,875,000 over one year.

The solution, then, would seem to be not divesting ourselves of Hossa in the first place, so that we can manage his contract all the way through and do the LTIR trick or have him fail to report and just kick that can down the road till a non-retarded CBA is written to cancel all these recaptures out.

Duncan Keith is trouble, too. He's signed through 2023, his hit is below his salary through 2017, and we'll already have to pay back about $7.3 million in cap space. He has a no-move clause, too. At least the contract is structured in such a way that there are a good number of equal-ish years, but we have some pain coming down the road. Hopefully, like I said, the whole thing will be forgotten about before we even get to that point.

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