04-10-2021, 12:28 PMluketd Wrote:

04-09-2021, 08:51 PMSimply Incorrect Wrote: Whether it’s 4 or 2 mil, doesn’t make a difference here. If HO openly admits the rule is hard to understand and subject to misinterpretation to the point where you have to re-word it, I fail to see how Toronto can be held at fault here.

And it’s not as if they didn’t pay the bonus, they did, so they didn’t scan their way out of having it impact their cap.

What is hard to understand is the specific example in the rule, which we will now have to reword and fix so that it doesnt happen again. The original bonus being counted towards S56 should have been caught, but it was not. There will be a punishment to the budget team coming, but like I said earlier we wanted to get this out in order to give ML enough time to submit an appeal. Now it is in the owners hands on how they want to handle it.

HO decided that it was a cap hit as a punishment. The final line is that it should have been caught but it wasnt, so we cant let it slide under the rug. We can debate whether the punishment is fair or not, but a decision had to be made, and this is what HO thought was fair given the situation.

I don't think the argument should be whether or not this broke the rule. I agree that the proper interpretation of the rule is the one you and HO are presenting.

My issue is, this is something that was approved by the budget team. When we post a contract we're submitting it to HO and the budget team. Much like our trade processes now work. If it's approved by an authority, I don't think it's fair to go back and say we got it wrong, we will now be punishing a team for the rule they broke.

If a police officer gave me permission to do something and then arrested me because on further consideration, what I did was against the law, I think that would be considered an unfair set of circumstances.

In sports, we regularly see umpires and officials after games say "I screwed up, i got the call wrong" but those leagues continue forward with the original decision because it was the decision that was made.

Now, Toronto is being punished to a greater extent than they would have been if the issue was caught on time. The punishment is being applied to the time period in which is was found rather than when it occurred. Budgets for this season had already been approved before this was found. I think it's only fair to carry the punishment to the next unapproved budget. You can do this as you've decided not to punish them for a S58 cap overage.