Connor McDavid placed on waivers at start of 26-27 season

[NYMike44]

Not sure if I have ever seen this before, but Connor McDavid was placed on waivers. Never seen a star player placed on waivers before, so this seems like it should be brought to attention.

[JeffR]

Thanks, got the save. I backed it up to the backup from a month earlier, and when I played it forward they didn't waive him in that one. In the main save, the Oilers picked up 3 players on waivers just prior to waiving him, but even with those plus their other NMC's, there isn't any situation I can see that would force them into needing to send him to the AHL, which seems to be what happened here.

But the timing is suspicious, it's right around the time the AI looks to cut cap hit for the end of the cushion period the next day, so a cap move seems like the most likely cause (although they're not actually over the cap.)

We'll have to do some more tests and see if we can re-create the logic that was used here, it looks like it might be some unusual combination of factors but we'll have to figure out exactly what it was.

[JeffR]

Found the problem: the Oilers roster had changed over so much during the offseason that every other skater either had a NMC in their contract, or had been acquired so recently that they were still in the lockout period where the AI won't send them down. McDavid didn't request an NMC as part of his renewal (another thing we'll look at), so he was literally the AI's only option to cut the roster down. We're going to make some changes so that lockout restriction won't engage when there's been so much roster turnover that doing so will make the list of moveable players unreasonably small.

[Iceman90]

Did anyone claim him?

[NYMike44]

Originally Posted by Iceman90

Did anyone claim him?

I did