Take out Weber and Armia from MTL's side, L'Heureux from NSH's side, change the 4th to MTL's 2022 3rd, and this could be feasible.

This will be a down the road trade. MTL has plenty of $$ to cover Weber's non-insurance covered salary. This year 6mil, next 3 mil. The last 3 years are at 1 mil a piece. Weber isn't going to contemplate official retirement until he's at least through next year. At that point MTL will trade him back to NSH and they'll ensure he doesn't retire so that they won't have to deal with the recapture penalty.

Weber has no reason to give up the millions still owed on his contract and choose to retire, when he's too injured to play. NSH can't keep Weber from retiring if he somehow miraculously heals up, anymore than MTL can force Weber to retire to somehow try to extort the Preds.

He's not going to heal up, but in those last 3 years only 1mil in salary is owed. That's the time the Preds are worried about him retiring officially. He'll have made almost 130 mil over his career by then, and that last 3 mil over 3 years will mean nothing to him. That's the point that NSH worries about, esp with recapture penalties against the cap of close to 24 mil in the last season.

That makes no sense though. If the choice is stay on LTIR and collect a million a year that you're entitled to without playing hockey, or decide to give up that money and officially retire even though you're injured, why would anyone retire in that situation? There's no upside for him to do that.

Sure there is. Players on long term IR have to consistently go under go testing to prove that they belong on LTIR and can't physically play. Weber just had to travel to MTL recently for those tests. It might be worth it for 6 or even 3 mil, but does he want to take time away from family, exp in this climate with covid for $1mil a year when he's got 130mil in the bank?

????? So if Weber retires, Nashville has a big recapture penalty...I believe it's 24m. If traded to Nashville , and Weber retires but retained as a roster the cap hit would be 7.8m minus 1.1. demotion to AHL.
That's 6.7m a year. Is that much difference than the recapture penalty?

Making an annual trip to a great city like MTL, catching up with some old teammates and friends, maintaining contacts if he's interested in a front office job someday. None of these things sound like such arduous hardships that anyone would decline a million dollars a year to get out of. Does he even have to make that trip, if he doesn't want to? What do players on LTIR who are too injured/unwell to travel do? Covid probably won't be a consideration 3-4 years down the road (fingers crossed on that one).

Well he has 4 more years on his deal, and I bet you he will be offered some sort of job in hockey likely being paid more than 1 mill a year before that 4 years is over, so there is a strong possibility he will want to retire in order to take such job. But I will correct you and Dutchies. The recapture penalty was actually changed in the last CBA agreement. It is no longer a 24 million dollar penalty in the final year, it is now a flat 7.8 (his cap hit) no matter when he retires whether it be now or the final year. Still though Nashville will not be able to afford that and will want to trade for him so he can retire without any recapture penalty. We don’t know if he will or won’t retire but it is definitely feasible.

Do people not know the recapture hit got changed? I didn't see that one come up in this thread, but yes that's true. $24M in one season was never going to happen anyway. The owners aren't going to let the NHL tear up one of their investments like that. I'm afraid there are still a couple points that need to be corrected here though.

One is that Weber doesn't need to retire as a player, to take another job in hockey. Other players have taken front office jobs without retiring before (Chris Pronger is a an example of that) and nothing's stopping Weber from doing that. Some articles I've seen say he's already doing some scouting for the Habs. I don't think anyone makes over a million for jobs like that though, aside from head coaches and GMs.

The only scenario in which recapture payments would apply to Weber is a situation where he recovers from his injuries enough that he no longer qualifies for LTIR, but he chooses to retire instead of resume playing. NSH re-acquiring Weber's contract doesn't get them out of cap recapture payments, if he retires. There's a possibility NSH could try to keep him on LTIR for some kind of made up symptoms in that scenario, like CHI has been accused of in the past, but the NHL would presumably keep a close eye on things in that instance, to ensure NSH isn't getting away with something they shouldn't.

Not too many people know about the recapture penalty changing because it was only reported briefly by Lebrun, plus if you’re not a Habs fan you probably wouldn’t have noticed it.

If what you’re saying is true that a player can still get a job in hockey ops without needing to retire from the nhl then yeah it becomes a lot less likely that he retires before the 4 years is up. I didn’t know that. We’ll see if he is able to stay on LTIR the whole time as well I'm not sure he will.

Yeah, Pronger worked for the Flyers as a scout, then for the department of player safety, and even got into the HHOF all while still being on LTIR.