Report: NHL rejects Chris Kelly’s contract extension

Jun 13, 2012, 10:15 PM EDT

Chris Kelly, Braden Holtby, Marcus Johansson, Jason Chimera

RDS’ Renaud Lavoie floats some surprising news: the NHL reportedly rejected the Boston Bruins’ four-year, $12 million contract extension with Chris Kelly. Lavoie refers to “cap issues” as what railroaded the deal.

Update: Elliotte Friedman reports that it might be a “tagging” issue and believes that the Bruins might need to wait until July 1 to try again. CSNNE.com’s Joe Haggerty backed that up from Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli.

“Peter Chiarelli addressed Kelly contract earlier today. He said he can’t make deal official until July 1 due to “payroll tagging” cap issue.”

Looking at the Bruins’ Cap Geek page, if you take out Kelly’s canceled $3 million cap hit, Boston has a little under $62 million committed to salaries for next season. If the ceiling is indeed $70.3 million, they’d have about $5 million in cap space if Kelly gets the same deal on July 1 and as much as $8 million if the Bruins suddenly have cold feet.

(Some believe that Kelly simply isn’t worth $3 million per year, but that’s a discussion for another day/the comments.)

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11 Comments (Feed for Comments)

claysbar - Jun 13, 2012 at 10:42 PM

Who runs the NHL, David Stern? If you don’t want teams signing players to contracts you don’t like, let’s start with actually aligning free agency with the end of a CBA. Don’t make teams assume the signing of a player may or may not run in in line with the magical cap that only becomes available when you have about a week and a half to adjust. The NHL owners may want to run this league like the NFL, but it’s not gonna happen. Attendance at an NFL game is “pretty much” a given but not at NHL games. I’m not a Bruins fan but when the NHL is giving teams crap about 3-4 line signings, come on.
- claysbar - Jun 13, 2012 at 11:34 PM
  
  Seriously, a thumbs down? I must have confused you when I said NHL, haven’t got to the L yet huh?
  - sabatimus - Jun 14, 2012 at 1:31 AM
    
    Just shut up already.
soj83 - Jun 13, 2012 at 10:50 PM

i was under the impression that you could be over the cap until about a week before the season starts. this was only one report though, hopefully it will be clarified if it is true.
killerpgh - Jun 13, 2012 at 10:56 PM

Yeah I’m 99.9% sure team can go over the cap by 10% during the off season. So there must be another reason.
claysbar - Jun 13, 2012 at 11:41 PM

The NHL is trying to pull an NFL. One, you only have up to 3 other comparisons for business models which have all set presidence when it comes to contractual law. Sadly, that’s all we have as fans. Either watch/pay to see the games or walk away.
- theawesomersfranchise - Jun 14, 2012 at 12:26 AM
  
  Learn to spell the big words before you try using them
- drewsylvania - Jun 14, 2012 at 1:31 AM
  
  Seriously–you need to explain WTH this has to do with Kelly’s contract being rejected.
redux12 - Jun 14, 2012 at 7:16 AM

NHL teams can’t go over the cap until free agency begins, which is why the deal was rejected. This is the same issue that is preventing the Flyers from re-signing Carle and Jagr.
- soj83 - Jun 14, 2012 at 9:50 AM
  
  before the update it was confusing, but that is all this issue is about….so it’s really a non-issue, just wait a few weeks for the contract to be official
- killerpgh - Jun 14, 2012 at 1:32 PM
  
  But Kelly’s (or Jagr/Carle) extension would not kick in until July 1st so I don’t understand why that would be a issue. It’s not like they are signing a contract for this season so it should have bearing on this years cap.