Waivers

Waivers are the mechanism through which teams may acquire free agents in The Conn Smythe Corner.

Soft and Hard Cap
The salary cap can be subdivided into two sections: the soft cap, and the hard cap.

The Soft Cap refers to the season-specific budget set at the start of the season that all GMs may use freely. GMs may trade for additional soft cap dollars at any time from other teams to replenish their soft cap.

The Hard Cap refers to the margin of allowance from the following year's soft cap. GMs may spend money directly from the next season's cap in the event they no longer have any soft cap space. GMs are allowed to borrow up to a predetermined amount for use in the existing season. In 2015-2016, the margin of allowance was set to $10 million, meaning teams were free to use up to $10 million from the following season's cap in the event they had $0 in soft cap space remaining. Hard cap space is not renewable, meaning that once dollars are spent from the margin of allowance, they are charged to the following season's cap. Because trading of future cap space is not possible, teams cannot "make up" whatever they spend from the following season's cap in the current season. Once the offseason begins, teams are able to trade money from the following season's cap, but not until that point.

Soft Cap
The soft cap is determined according to this formula:

Year X Soft Waiver Cap = [20% * (Year x-3 spent)] + [30% * (Year x-2 spent)] + 50%* [Year x-1 spent] wherein the previous year (x-1) is weighted at 0.50 (50%), x-2 is weighted 0.30 (30%) and x-3 is weighted 0.20 (20%) - this arrangement follows so that x-2 is always weighted at 60% of the remaining combined Year 1+2 weight (totalling 0.50).

"spent" refers to the average amount of soft and hard cap space used by clubs in a given year.

Hard Cap
the margin of allowance will be rounded down to the closest million in computing the hard cap limit.

2015-16 Waiver Cap
Because only two years of data are available, as a special one-time case, the salary cap for 2015 has been computed as such using all available data:

Note: It has been decided that the soft cap upper limit will be $42,000,000 in 2015 to account for the draft date being two weeks before the start of the season.

Note: 25% * $42,000,000 = $10,500,000. However,

Incremental bidding
Teams may increase their bids by a fix amount of $50,000 at a time on Yahoo!.

For example: bids such as $500,001 or $1,890,100 are not valid.

Bids that do not conform to the fixed incremental bid increase will be invalid and the team will be subject to a fine of $1,000,000 in waiver money for first offences and over $1,000,000 for each subsequent offence.

History
In 2012-13, the Conn Smythe Corner utilized a free-agent acquisition system where all players dropped went directly to free agency after clearing waivers. Teams were free to pick up players at any time, and as many times as they wanted.

In 2013-14, the League adopted a FAAB (free-agent acquisition budget)-based waiver system, eliminating free agency in order to even the playing field by giving all clubs an equal opportunity to acquire any player made available through the use of waivers. The cap was set to $64,300,000 to mimic the NHL's real-life salary cap. Minimum bids on players were set to $500,000. Waivers processed on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. In order to limit the influence of waiver pickups on the outcome of a given matchup, no waiver claims were to be processed on Saturday and Sunday - the last two playing days of a head-to-head matchup.

In 2014-15, the FAAB-based waiver system was modified to include waiver processing on all weekdays with the continued exception of Saturday and Sunday.

In 2015-16 the FAAB-based waiver system underwent significant changes, with the introduction of the soft and hard caps and a formula for computing a given year's waiver cap budget. Using data from the 2013 and 2014 seasons, a soft-cap upper limit of $42,000,000 was set along with a hard-cap upper limit of $52,000,000. Incremental bids were introduced, requiring general managers to increase their bids by a fixed amount of $50,000 at a time.

In 2016-17, a soft-cap upper limit of $38,000,000 was set along with a hard-cap upper limit of $47,000,000 ($9,000,000 margin of allowance).