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.

Interpretation
"x" refers to the current season

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

"manual adjustment" refers to the amount the Commissioners may add, at their discretion, to a given year's computer soft waiver cap total. It has been used, historically, to increase the soft waiver cap upper limit to account for a multi-week gap between the Draft and the start of the Regular Season.

"upper limit" refers to the maximum amount of soft or hard waiver cap space that can be spent, not accounting for any additional acquisitions of soft cap space in a season.

"margin of allowance" refers to hard cap space – the margin of next season's soft cap space a club is allowed to utilize.

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

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).

The soft cap upper limit will be rounded to the closest $50,000 fixed bid increment.

Hard Cap
The hard cap upper limit is determined according to these formulas

The margin of allowance will be rounded to the closest $50,000 fixed bid increment in computing the hard cap limit.

Cap Space
Soft cap space is replenishable – teams may acquire soft cap space from other clubs via trade at any point in the regular season. Only soft cap space from the current season can be traded. For the purposes of the waiver cap, offseason trades involve soft cap space from the immediately upcoming season's soft cap. It is only at this point that teams may trade for soft cap space from a future season.

As trading for future cap space is not permitted outside the context of the offseason, teams may not acquire additional cap space to replenish their margin of allowance during regular season play. This replenishment may only occur in the form of offseason trades for soft cap space that are computed in the upcoming season's cap.

During the regular season, soft cap space can be acquired from other clubs up until and including the annual trade deadline.

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).

In 2017-18, a soft-cap upper limit of $33,000,000 was set along with a hard-cap upper limit of $41,000,000 ($8,000,000 margin of allowance).