The daylight between Odor’s foot and second base in Game 2 of the ALDS only constituted Friday’s second biggest sports injustice, as the NHLPA and NHL announced that a settlement had been reached between Mike Richards and the Los Angeles Kings in Richard’s contract termination grievance. Rather than facing a 10-year buyout penalty, a five-year cap payout, or any sort of circumvention punishment, the King’s will face five years of a $1.3M cap recapture (which was in place without the settlement) and an additional 10 years of cap charge for whatever the settlement payment is. It is not yet known what the actual number is on the payout, but apparently it’s a fair bet that it is probably at or below $1M.

The end result is clear on this; the only winner here is the Kings organization. Mike Richards breaks somewhat even (barely), and ultimately both the NHL and the NHLPA lose big time. The fact that both signed off on the deal should be taken only as an indictment on both organizations, and as a stain on the fairness of the game.

Some quick recap: while many details are sketchy, the bare bones of the situation is that the Kings terminated Mike Richards’ contract (5 years at $5.75M/year left) after finding out that Richards had been arrested for possession of a controlled substance. The substance turned out to be a personal use amount of Oxycodon, a painkiller. Whether or not the Kings terminated the deal because of the arrest, because Richards didn’t inform them, or because it fucked up a trade they had been negotiating is unknown.

However, what is known is that the Kings were looking for any way they could to get out of Richards’ deal. His play had fallen off, thanks in no small part to a slew of injuries that included at least one concussion, and the Kings were facing a major cap crunch at a time when their best forward is approaching unrestricted free agency. The team is in Cup contention status, and even paying out a smaller amount over a longer period of time is hugely advantageous to buying Richards out, keeping him, or being forced to retain salary and/or send assets to move him to another team.

When Richards and the NHLPA grieved the termination, it looked like the Kings were in trouble. While a contract termination has never been grieved before in the NHL, similar situations in the MLB proved that it is very difficult to terminate a contract, even in cases of criminal behaviour. Combined with the fact that the CBA has a policy that deals with substance abuse (including arrests) that does not jump right to termination, and it looked like the Kings were about to strike out on their gamble.

And make no mistake, this was a gamble that was done purely for cap reasons. Whatever Richards’ sins, it’s hard to see how they were more worthy of contract termination than those committed by a number of other players. And before the cries of comparing apples to oranges come in, the Kings didn’t even terminate Slava Voynov’s contract after he was deported to Russia following his conviction for domestic violence. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that had Richards been arrested for possession in 2012, we would probably be having a very different conversation.

So why did Richards have a motivation to settle? It’s impossible to speculate accurately, but there are general reasons why people settle cases that they have a good chance of winning. It’s possible that Richards did not want any problems he’d been having (be they drugs, fitness, or personal) to become public record. It’s also possible that Richards, who had been threatened with a buyout a year ago and promised to up his performance, felt guilt over his failure to live up to that promise. A much more worrying possibility is that Richards was generally concerned for his financial future (short and/or long term), and had more at stake to lose by going to arbitration than the Kings did, despite the chances that he would win.

And while there are those who will blame Richards for his drop off in play or having the drugs, it’s worth considering that neither are good grounds for termination, legally or morally. A player can perform as bad as possible, but hockey contracts are negotiated with the assumption that they will be paid out in full. This, it should be noted, is the entire reason why the NHLPA exists. Players’ careers are short, and their performance can drop off for a number of reasons including age, injury, rule changes, personal issue, or just not being that good. There is a reason why David Clarkson’s contract has not been terminated, and that’s because it was signed with the assumption that David Clarkson will play hockey as he will, however good or bad that is. Performance can be negotiated to dictate bonuses, but not the actual execution of the contract. For all of Lombardi’s hard to swallow talk about feeling "betrayed" by Richards’ failure to pick up his game, the real betrayal here is that Mike Richards signed a contract in good faith, which Lombardi knowingly traded for, and that was then terminated ultimately because of a decline in play.

Secondly, and much more tragic, is that Richards was not caught with a recreational drug (though legally that would make no difference), but rather with painkillers. Now why would a player who is fighting through injury to salvage his major professional career be motivated to take painkillers? And even more tragically, how would he have gotten painkillers (which it should be noted are one of the most addictive substances on the market) in the first place? It would be naïve to rule out the good chance that Richards had previously been prescribed painkillers by a team doctor, either in Philadelphia or in Los Angeles. If Richards was in any way addicted to those painkillers, which is a good bet considering he was motivated enough to have an illegal prescription for them, then it makes the Kings’ termination of his contract all the more distasteful.

For the league and the players’ union though, despite what the cap hit and payouts end up being, the mere fact that the Kings benefitted from this in any way is a huge precedential problem. For the NHLPA, it means that players who are considered negative value guys are at risk of being terminated for cap reasons. While it’s tempting to say that they simply have to refrain from drug abuse, this is a bunk argument. Firstly, drug abuse is undoubtedly a problem in the NHL, and while nobody knows the actual numbers, suffice to say that both (illegal) prescription and recreational drugs are not limited to a few bad apples. But secondly, this whole settlement has shown that a team doesn’t even need to necessarily have a valid reason for termination. Because if they are worried about losing a grievance, they can simply negotiate a settlement for a lower amount of money. That the NHLPA would consent to any precedent that would allow teams to pay out less money than a player’s contract is absurd.

And the NHL should be similarly concerned, because every big market team is going to look at this and say, "Why would I buy out a player and face a 2/3 cap penalty when I can terminate their contract, settle, and be on the hook for significantly less cap?" And before you think this would just be limited to cases of drugs and other such cases, just know that a termination can be done under the "Morality Clause" of the CBA. It may not be long before we see the march of legal creep to the point where teams will terminate contracts for anything that can be considered functionally immoral. You can scoff, but remember that because of this case the team won’t actually have to prove that the termination was valid; they’ll simply have to wait for a grievance and then settle. The worst-case scenario is that they’re right back where they started from.

This will undoubtedly favour the richer teams that can both afford the process of grievance and settlement, and that will benefit from a long term, low cap payout over a larger, high cap payout. And with everything the league has done to protect parity in the league, (including the cap, the 35+ rule, restricting buried cap relief, and others) the last thing they want is to see big market teams benefit from a long, odious process that makes players sing for their supper.

The upshot of all this is that the Kings win while everybody else loses, and it’s hard not to feel like the former played dirty and won here. If the league and the NHLPA have any interest in players’ rights and league parity, they will find a way to make sure that the precedent set in this case doesn’t stand.

EDIT: So the irreplaceable Elliot Freidman and the replaceable-every decade Bill Daly have shed a little more light on this situation. Starting with Freidman, he published in his 30 Thoughts (must-read every week, btw) that the settlement is believed to be around $550,000 per year on average. In math speak, that means Richards is getting around $8.8 million in the settlement. (Remember, that 5-year cap recapture that LA gets for the back-diving deal is just dead cap space; it's not paid out to anyone). Richards had $22 million remaining on his contract, and a regulation buyout would have netted him $14.7 million over ten years. So all told Richards loses just under $6 million in this settlement from what he would have normally gotten. I'll reiterate (as does Freidman) that Richards had a lot more to lose in arbitration than the Kings did.

Now, Daly said that teams shouldn't be angry (they definitely are) because a) Richards might have lost the case anyway, and b) this can't set a precedent because the agreement reportedly has "no-precedent" language in it. I won't rewrite this whole article, but saying that the settlement is fine because the Kings could have won ignores the entire issue. Again, the whole point is that now it won't matter what the actual merits of this or a future termination are; teams just have to terminate and settle, and everybody "wins." (Except many people, obviously)

And the problem with the precedent thing is similarly obvious; if this was a fairly decided decision, than there is literally no reason on Earth that another team could not do the same thing. If the NHL said no in that situation, then that team would say that they were being treated unfairly. There is some general legal talk about "no-precedent" language, but for the most part that's just not the way the legal system works, and you'd basically have to completely seal a settlement to enforce that agreement. There is literally zero chance that happens in a small, close-knit community like the NHL. And even worse, if the no-precedent language is because the decision is unfair, then the league just gave the Kings hugely undeserved special treatment. Neither options are encouraging.