Actions have consequences: Martin returns to N.J., Pens edge depleted Devils

Yesterday on Columbus Day Monday, the Pittsburgh Penguins visited New Jersey to play a holiday matinee against the Devils.  The New Jersey bench featured plenty of empty space, giving the appearance of several players taking a holiday.  Some potential replacement Devils were, in fact, “on holiday”, but certainly not by choice.  Due to the after-effects of lengthy off-season legal wrangling that ultimately saw New Jersey retain free agent forward Ilya Kovalchuk on a long-term, high-priced contract, the Devils are in a bind, unable to recall players from their AHL affiliate to fill in for injured players due to New Jersey’s difficulties in trying to keep their payroll under the salary cap.

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For their game against the Penguins, the Devils dressed just fifteen skaters – nine forwards and six defencemen – as three players suddenly became unavailable after Saturday’s blowout loss at Washington.  Blueliner Anton Volchenkov suffered a broken nose when he took a slapshot from Nicklas Backstrom off the face.  Right wing Brian Rolston suffered an upper-body injury and enforcer Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond received an automatic one-game suspension for instigating a fight during the last five minutes of the game.  Although New Jersey has three open spots on its 23-man active roster, their hands are tied in terms of making transactions since they have spent right up to the 2010-11 NHL salary cap of $59.4-million.

When rosters were required to be set at 3 p.m. EDT last Wednesday, New Jersey made use of Article 50.10 (d) (iv) in the CBA, “Bona-Fide Long-Term Injury/Illness Exception to the Upper Limit“, to bring the club in compliance with the salary cap by placing defencemen Bryce Salvador and Anssi Salmela on the injured reserve and injured, non-roster lists, respectively.  Even so, the Devils are still in an uncomfortable position with little wiggle room and the worst possible scenario for the Devils is the one which has befallen them presently.

Volchenkov and Rolston are both clearly hurt, but for an unknown period of time.  New Jersey could elect to place them on long-term injured reserve and replace them with players whose aggregate salaries do not exceed the combined salaries of Volchenkov ($4.25-million) and Rolston ($5.062-million), but that would require the injured pair, in accordance with the CBA, to each miss at least ten NHL games and 24 calendar days before being allowed to suit up again for the Devils.  Is New Jersey willing to take that risk?  More relevant however, is the fact that replacements remotely equal in quality to Volchenkov and Rolston simply cannot be acquired through trade nor do such types exist in the AHL, waiting to be called up.

As a stop-gap measure, the Devils made a minor transaction this afternoon, waiving Letourneau-Leblond and signing veteran forward Adam Mair.  Their salaries are essentially the same.  New Jersey GM Lou Lamoriello said, “I feel the team played well with the roster.  There was, in my opinion, a burden on the coach and players, and it’s my responsibility to get this straightened out.”  It will be interesting to see if Lamoriello can somehow engineer a transaction in the coming weeks that will give his club more breathing room under the salary cap framework so that New Jersey can sustain injuries and properly replace the sidelined players.  Will we see drastic trades along the lines of what Chicago did during the summer?  Time will tell.

It was an amusing irony yesterday when new Pens’ defenceman Paul Martin skated in on an empty New Jersey net and scored late in the third period to ice a 3-1 victory over the Devils.  Martin played six seasons in New Jersey but jumped to Pittsburgh as a free agent this past off-season.  He was a player the Devils could not re-sign due to the financial burden of retaining Kovalchuk.  One of the players who came with Kovalchuk at the trade deadline, Salmela, is out with a knee injury and Volchenkov, one of the new blueliners replacing Martin, is now out indefinitely.

Irony can be cruel, but the salary cap is even more harsh.