4 star goalie waived due to salary cap
 

Ottawa waived Oettinger just before the start of the regular season (4 star ability/5 star potential) most likely due to being 5 million over the cap. He has 1 year left on his contract at 4.8 million so Ottawa looks to still be slightly above the cap.

Just wondering if the AI is programmed to try and trade players of a certain ability before waiving them?

How has he been playing?

I only ask as I've recently altered the settings on the 'talent from stats' setting down by 10 points and I've seen far less unexpected waivers in my current sim(In the scheme of things that is still a small sample size though). Sometimes if a player is performing badly then that may outweigh (or at least compete with but at an unhealthy balance) their skill and result in something from the AI akin to this.

He was waived a few days before the start of the regular season (and I wouldn't think preseason stats would dictate it)


Pretty sure it was a cap causality looking at Ottawa's numbers and I know sometimes good players get waived/released.

I guess I am more curious if the AI makes attempt at trading a player of this caliber before waiving them or if they try to release other players to try and keep players that may be at or above a certain ability?

Yes, it always tries to make a trade before resorting to shuffling players to the minors to save a bit of cap room. If there's not much cap space available around the league, it may not be able to find a trading partner, though.

Ok, glad it's programmed to attempt to make a trade first. :)


Given it was right before the season started, I wouldn't be surprised if not too many teams had 4.8 mil in cap space (and maybe the ones that did have the cap, didn't need a goalie)

I wonder if there was a better option, or if the team made a UFA signing in the offseason that was questionable to cause the need for them to place him on waivers?