Darrell Davis: Sports rules are made to be broken, or at least bent.

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Pack of 4 mini columns:

Number 1: The Las Vegas Golden Kings are bending and manipulating NHL roster rules for their ultimate benefit.

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The Knights may not be the only franchise playing games on injured reserve, and they weren’t the first. That would be Nikita Kucherov’s Tampa Bay Lightning circa 2020, but Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon may be the league’s most seasoned manager when it comes to roster cheating.

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For the second year in a row, Knights captain Mark Stone was placed on the team’s long-term injured reserve during the regular season and returned for the playoffs. This year, Stone suffered a lacerated spleen. Although he had back surgery last season, Stone recovered enough to lead the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup. Kucherov did the same in Tampa Bay in 2021.

McCrimmon said NHL medical staff carefully checks each player’s injury status to ensure that no one is unfairly placed on the roster in order to exempt teams from paying their salaries based on league-imposed caps. He claimed that Stone’s injury must be justified. What is unjust is the concession.

Also worth noting: Highly-paid defenseman Alex Pietrangelo was on LTIR until he miraculously healed from an appendectomy just before the regular season ended in Las Vegas.

McCrimmon traded for three players he couldn’t buy otherwise: Tomas Hertl, Anthony Mantha and Noah Hanifin, without including Stone’s $9.5 million salary in the team’s $83.5 million cap. The NHL does not have a salary cap in the postseason, so everyone is eligible to play in the playoffs.

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There is a simple solution to this clearly inappropriate behavior. The idea is to create a postseason salary cap so that teams that are competitive in the regular season can be competitive in the playoffs. It would definitely make the league look better.

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Number 2: Who wants to bet that former NBA player Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors won’t be the only player to be suspended for involvement in gambling? Online sites also allow you to set prop his bets.

Which sport will be next?

Will that happen within the next year? 6 months? Three months?

Porter was banned for life for helping an NBA bettor turn an $80,000 wager into a $1.1 million payout. Porter underperformed and was taken out early from two games in which the stakes were unusually high for his expected performance. The first stake was paid, but the second stake was not after the company reported and froze the suspicious stake. Porter was also found guilty of betting on basketball through an employee’s online account.

In announcing the results of the league investigation that led to Porter’s ouster, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said his league must protect its integrity.

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Major League Baseball has been trying to do just that since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. But All-Time Hits leader Pete Rose was suspended for gambling, and Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani is facing a gambling investigation, blaming everything on the interpreter, including a $45 million loss. Miraculously, he survived.

The NHL suspended Ottawa Senators center Shane Pinto for half of last season for violating the league’s gambling regulations. Since the 1960s, the NFL has suspended 10 players for gambling violations, half of them in the past two years since sports betting became legal and began to overwhelm professional leagues. It’s not just recreational gamblers who lose their homes, cars, relationships, and reputations.

Compulsive gambling is an addiction. Athletes are not immune.

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Number 3: According to the CFL, only three teams exceeded the league’s player salary cap for 2023. The BC Lions cost $85,979, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers $25,947 and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats $2,654. The cap in 2024 will be $5.525 million.

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Violators who do not comply with the payroll management system will be subject to a fine of the same amount. Since no team received more than $100,000, the April 30th draft order will remain unchanged. It’s not a perfect system, and there are many who question the actual tally and accuse CFL teams of paying top athletes behind the scenes. There are also complaints about job and salary caps in football operations. CFLs still need to be frugal. If a CFL had no spending cap, there would be no CFL.

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Number 4: WADA has denied a New York Times report that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for illegal drugs in 2021 but will be allowed to compete in the 2024 Olympics. Hmm? Which is more trustworthy: a newspaper that flatters China and Russia, or the World Anti-Doping Agency?

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