Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on Saturday Headlines on the use of LTIR and the advantage of being in a sunbelt or no-tax state.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Ron MacLean: “I would say do you Elliott, Kelly McCrimmon is becoming to general managers with the late Roger Neilson was to coaches in terms of innovation. Now he didn’t invent LTIR but he’s done well with it for sure.
And there’s also that talk we had in the first intermission about Sunbelt advantage. If you’re at last hour, 11th hour dealing with trade deadline and against the clock, you have to make a decision to convince someone to move. Not bad to try and convince them to go south. What do you think of all that?”
Friedman: “Well, first of all on the on the LTIR thing. Like, like I’ll say this, I find it very difficult to criticize Vegas on this because if I was a manager, I would do the exact same thing. And I think there’s a lot of managers who feel very similarly that if they had the kind of advantage to do it, they would do the exact same thing.
I think if I heard anything that people might want to change today, it’s that there’s there’s a couple of managers who said they just don’t, or they’re not 100% comfortable with the idea that someone can’t play game 82, but then is okay two or three days later to play Game One of the playoffs.
Now, you can’t do anything about it under this CBA, it’s collectively bargained, but I think they’re going to be curious to see if we get to the next CBA, if there’s any discussion about if you can’t return in the regular season, is there a certain amount of time that you’re going to have to miss in the playoffs?
I don’t know how much support this will have. It may have none it may have a lot. But I think if there was any complaint, it wasn’t even about Vegas, it was just about the general situation. Is it does seem weird that you can’t play Game 82 of the regular season and two days later, you’re okay to play in the playoffs. That’s why a couple of guys said to me.”
MacLean: “What about the southern advantage?”
Friedman: “You know, you know, I have to say this that it’s not the southern advantage. I think is the cap rises, Ron, I was listening to what you said I was talking about it with someone. I think there’s definitely a realization.
I don’t even know if anything can be done about it, that the six teams or that are in the know tax states, they’re gonna have a huge advantage especially as the cap rises. But I don’t know if anything can really be done about it.”