NHL players await lockout bonuses
Even a former Flyer like Chris Pronger, who hasnt played since 2011, will get a bonus spread over three years.
TORONTO - Chris Pronger has not skated in an NHL game since Nov. 19, 2011. Yet Pronger, in addition to every player on the Flyers' payroll in 2012-13, will receive a long-awaited bonus check in the mail next month.
Every player with an NHL contract from the lockout-shortened campaign will receive the first of three "transition payments" on Oct. 15, when their first paycheck is distributed.
The payment was first reported by sportsnet.ca's Chris Johnston.
The transition payments, doled out on Oct. 15 in 2014, 2015 and 2016, were negotiated as part of the NHL's new Collective Bargaining Agreement when the lockout ended. The NHL set aside $300 million to help players adjust to receiving 50 percent of the revenue share, as opposed to the 57 percent they received prior to the 113-day lockout.
In that lockout-shortened, 48-game season, players were paid a pro-rated amount of approximately 53 percent of the salary negotiated on their contracts for that year.
As such, each player will receive the first installment of $190,000 in a transition payment next month for each $1 million in scheduled salary for that year. So, Pronger will be paid roughly $1.368 million divided over each of the next three Octobers, since he was due $7.2 million in 2012-13.
Many long-gone Flyers, such as Danny Briere ($1.33 million), Scott Hartnell ($608,000) and even retired players like Jody Shelley ($171,000) and defenseman Matt Walker ($380,000) will receive checks from that season.
Few Flyers have made out better as a bandit than Walker, who last played hockey in 2012. Acquired in a salary-dump trade with Tampa Bay for Simon Gagne in 2010, Walker was paid just south of $5 million for an astounding eight games in a Flyers uniform.
- Frank Seravalli