Sportsnet 590 The FAN: Vegas Golden Knights GM Kelly McCrimmon on the criticism the Golden Knights have received for their use of the LTIR.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “I’m sure you’ve heard all the commentary around how was Vegas able to do this? And the skepticism and again, I’m not there. I don’t like playing Doctor, I’m not going to question anybody’s health. I’m really uncomfortable doing that either, either professionally or privately as well.
But how do you address the commentary out there about how, what is Vegas doing here? This isn’t the spirit of the CBA. This isn’t the spirit of LTIR. How is Vegas able to do this? What do you say to people who have those types of comments about your team?
McCrimmon: “Well, I could talk on this for a while Jeff, it isn’t the spirit. Well, LTIR is, is collectively bargain between the Players Association and the NHL. And the idea behind it is if you have a player suffer a significant injury, you can replace that player. That’s the the idea behind it.
You know, obviously from there, it’s the timing of injuries. And we had, Shea Theodore miss 38 games with, with surgery on his back. And you know, it happened at a time of the year where it was a significant injury, but we knew that he would return. So that’s, you know, you can utilize that space to some degree to help manage your roster day to day. But in terms of Shea’s availability, we were confident that he would return
The you know, I guess insinuation that, that these injuries aren’t significant. I know that the two in question last year was with Mark Stone and again that back surgery that was quite unique. It wasn’t a regular back surgery if it is such a thing. And this year, we had a lacerated spleen. And you know, as I mentioned, when I did my media availability, Google lacerated spleen and see if you can tell when a player is going to be back.
So you know, it’s ridiculous to suggest that these weren’t significant injuries or aren’t significant injuries. And furthermore, the National Hockey League police’s all of this. So the rules are rules. The NHL watches this very carefully.
And, you know, last year we had Mark Stone’s $9.5 million of LTIR, we acquired Ivan Barbashev, Jonathan Quick and Teddy Blueger. I would suggest to you we probably could have acquired all three players without Mark stones LTIR this year. You know it, It happened that there are opportunities available use that space. So that’s, that’s what we did.
So you know, the flip side is to have $9.5 million of LTIR space as a general manager and sit on your hands and I don’t think that’s, that’s doing, doing our job the way that we should.”
