Salary Cap Analysis

[CrazyCanuck]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

You're right about how bonuses are allocating. It's just a matter of how much a team can afford to kick down the road. There's often a little more wiggle room than there appears to be, because the cap limit goes up every year. Last year the limit was $85 million. This year it will be $93 million. The next year it will be near $100 million. The key is not to kick too much of the bonus down the road.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Schneed10

For example, Portis originally signed for a bonus of $11.6 million over 8 years. This year, he's due a $3 million roster bonus. If you renegotiate that into a signing bonus, here's the bonus allocation:

2004: $1.45 million
2005: $1.45 million
2006: $1.45 million + $0.5 million = $1.95 million total
2007: $1.45 million + $0.5 million = $1.95 million total
2008: $1.45 million + $0.5 million = $1.95 million total
2009: $1.45 million + $0.5 million = $1.95 million total
2010: $1.45 million + $0.5 million = $1.95 million total
2011: $1.45 million + $0.5 million = $1.95 million total

That's adding half a million per year, very manageable. In 2007, he's due another roster bonus in the amount of $1 million. Renegotiating that would add another $0.2 million to each year from 2007 onwards. It's not an extraordinary amount.

With the current CBA you can only prorate 4 years out for 2006. It used to be a max of 7 years, but has been declining every year as the CBA approaches expiry.

So Portis' $3M bonus would be spread out over the next 4 years at a hit of $750K per year. If a new CBA is signed, I'd assume the max proration would go back to 7 years.