#I wish i was eligible for the fourth shot especially as we’re coming in the holidays but what can you do

[queen-evanlyn]

Social event ™️ conquered!! It wasn’t as bad as it could have been but it wasn’t fantastic either. I was terrifically late but I avoided all the ppl I didn’t know so that’s good

[plms-hockey]

Borrowing McDavid: The Case for Allowing True Playoff Rentals

Emily Jo Michele

Last week, I encountered something strange: the first new Connor McDavid highlight reel in my twitter feed in over a month.

This should not have been strange. Every night for a month, we’ve ostensibly been watching the best hockey in the world, the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And yet I saw arguably the best player in the world participating not in the best hockey in the world, but in a pre-tournament game against the Latvian national team which doesn’t boast a single NHL roster player.

It’s simply disappointing, if we’re being honest - bordering on truly frustrating.

We’re all currently stuck in a rather lackluster situation wherein arguably the best hockey player in the world isn’t participating in the best hockey games because his team happened to suck this year. He’s not the only one; Johnny Gaudreau, Dylan Larkin, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Sebastian Aho, Mathew Barzal, and countless other invaluable players boarded planes to Herning, Denmark without taking the ice for a  single playoff game.

Well, not every team can make the playoffs, you’d be right to point out - but what if there were a way most of the best players could? By joining their national teams for the IIHF World Championships, it’s clear that many of the players who aren’t too banged up from the season want to play more hockey, so why shouldn’t we let them?

This is where the concept of a true Playoff Rental comes in.

A playoff rental as we know it colloquially refers to a player, usually on the final year of his contract, who is traded from a non-playoff team to a playoff team around the Trade Deadline. They’re called rentals because the expectation is that the traded player is likely to leave the team to which they were traded in free agency the following fall - in doing so the acquiring team is essentially “renting” the player only for a playoff run and the postseason.

What I’m proposing in the name of fun is something else: a true Playoff Rental.

The concept is simple: once a team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, they may make Playoff Rental trades to teams who have clinched playoff spots. Obviously, this wouldn’t be a free-for-all. The following rules would apply:

1. Playoff Rentals are only eligible to play for the receiving team during the postseason. Even if a trade is made weeks before the beginning of the first round of the playoffs, the traded player is not allowed on the playoff team’s roster until after the end of the regular season. Both this rule and only allowing clinched teams to acquire Playoff Rentals disallows teams from using playoff rentals to help clinch a spot in the playoffs. Playoff Rental trades are permitted until 24 hours before the beginning of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The other trade assets move to the receiving team immediately (eg. if a prospect or active player were part of the trade for the rental, they would immediately move to said team for the remainder of the regular season if there are games remaining).

2. The Playoff Rental’s Player rights immediately revert to the original team upon playoff team’s elimination from the playoffs. As stated in the name, Playoff Rentals are only part of the receiving team’s roster for the playoffs. The other assets in the trade are “for keeps,” as outlined above.

3. A Playoff Rental’s cap hit does not count against the playoff team’s salary cap. The Playoff Rental’s salary/cap hit counts towards the original team’s books, which ensures both teams are cap compliant upon the date that the Playoff Rental reverts to the original team.

4. No team may have more than two* Playoff Rentals on their roster. This is a limiting factor to prevent one team completely turning over their roster for the playoffs. It also makes sure that Playoff Rentals could be distributed more evenly throughout playoff teams as, due to the fact that the Playoff Rental’s salary isn’t against the playoff team’s cap, it would be too easy for some teams to otherwise hoard Playoff Rentals. * - You could potentially go up to three or four Playoff Rental slots as the max if this were to be a real rule implementation, but in general a limiting rule would exist to make the playoff teams recognizably similar to the team that played most of the season.

5. All players have automatic Playoff Rental - No Move Clauses that must be waived in the case of a Playoff Rental trade. If a player does not wish to join another team during the playoffs, they can choose not to waive their PR-NMC. There are no partial PR-NMCs; they are all or nothing.

There would, of course, be many more minor bureaucratic rules to allow teams obtaining Playoff Rentals to make sure those rentals are healthy, not playing with nagging injuries, etc., but these would make up the primary ruleset.

An extra note on Rule 1, which disallows any Playoff Rental use during the regular season: this rule exists in the spirit of keeping General Managers honest. It ensures that GMs have to at least be able to build a team that gets them into the playoffs, and it doesn’t allow mediocre teams off the hook by allowing them to offload their best players after elimination to jockey for a better draft position. If you’re Peter Chiarelli and you can’t get to the playoffs with Connor McDavid on your team, then I believe the four goals he scores in Game 82 to lose you a lottery ball is your bed to lie in.

Rule 5 exists because, not only should players be able to decline  to participate in other playoff runs for any reason, but both teams and players alike should be allowed to weigh the risks of potential injuries when making Playoff Rental trades. Playoff Rentals would be inherently risky in this regard. A rental player could get injured between elimination and playoffs, which would be bad for a team who’s already made a rental trade for them. This could result in few in-season Playoff Rental trades even among teams who have been eliminated or have clinched weeks before the postseason. To accommodate for this, the league could add an extra day or two window at the end of the season before the playoffs begin. This could be its own attraction, potentially even more exciting than the regular trade deadline.

Other injury implications could simply come down to a imminent UFA player not wanting to get injured in the playoffs the summer before negotiating their next contract - a boring but completely understandable reason why a player might not waive a PR-NMC.

Long-term injuries would also be part of the risk for the original team and a player who is returning the following year.

The reward would be worth the risk for a lot of teams, though, as would be the chance for glory for a player. By renting out your top players, or even key role players, you recoup extra assets to make your team better the following year(s). This has the delightful side effect of doing two things we’ve long thought to be mutually exclusive: having a league where any team has a shot going into October and allowing for the existence of super teams.

Good teams get much, much better for the playoffs but, by trading assets to obtain a world-class player for the playoffs, make themselves weaker in the future. The obvious flip side is the bad team that acquires some minor assets in return for loaning out their player and therefore receives a boost in the following years. It allows the league to increase year over year parity while simultaneously letting fans watch Johnny Gaudreau on the wing of Evgeni Malkin compete against Leon Draisaitl centering Artemi Panarin.

It’s hard not to see what a ratings and interest boon these temporary superteams would be. By concentrating the excess talent in the league into the sixteen best teams in a given year the league could create Titans, with marquee matchups in every round. Lightning vs Devils was fun this year, but how does that series look with John Tavares rolling over the boards against Steven Stamkos and Oliver Ekman-Larsson feeding slick passes to Taylor Hall?

It would be as good for the sport as it would be for the fans, especially those of eliminated teams who may be more likely to tune in to playoff games to see their superstars compete with and against the best in the world. The marketing potential alone could probably fill a second article, but simply it gives even casual fans (often My Team or No Team type fans) something to connect with and cheer for. If Brock Boeser (in an alternate reality where he wasn’t brutally Clutterbuck-ed at the end of the season) was playing with Wild Bill Karlsson in this historic VGK Cinderella run, you can bet there would be more Vancouver fans tuning into Vegas vs California matchups.

While it’s likely that the risk-averse NHL would refuse to use this option as dramatically as I’ve painted here and instead only rent fourth line centers and bottom pairing defensemen, I would hope that  GMs would get twitchier if the Flyers pick up Mathew Barzal on the last day of the season and Jonathan Toews was on a plane to play center for the Sharks. There are very few drawbacks and the increased parity, the super teams, the massive marketing potential, and the pure badassery it would create makes any risk worth it.

Basically, if the NHL refuses to give us the Olympics, this is the least they can do.

The only remaining question: What would you give to have Connor McDavid on your playoff team?

You can find me on twitter @emilyjomichele