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Q: If a team in the NHL goes over the salary cap, what happens?

-- Glenn Martinson Jr., Cumberland, Md.

MOLINARI: If that ever would happen -- and there's no indication that it has since the salary-cap system took effect in 2005 -- the team that breached the cap ceiling during the regular season would have to immediately make whatever personnel moves are necessary to get back into compliance.

Calgary learned that the hard way late last season, when it dressed fewer than the normal complement of 18 skaters for some games because it had injuries to several high-paid regulars and league rules do not allow players to be placed on the long-term injured list -- where their salaries would not count against the cap -- when there are nine or fewer games left in the season.

No one has turned up a significant loophole in the cap-ceiling regulations yet and the league office, which has to approve any trade, would not sign off on any player exchange that would put one of the teams involved above the ceiling.

It's worth noting that neither the 23-man roster limit nor the cap maximum is in effect during the playoffs. Teams also are allowed to go as much as 10 percent above the cap ceiling during a designated period of the offseason, but must get down to it before the start of the regular season.

Q: The current NHL standings really do bother me. I can understand that teams that lose in overtime deserve some credit, but it really upsets me when they are able to jump above teams that have more wins. Has the NHL ever considered using wins as the main standings indicator and overtime losses as more of a tie-breaker between teams with the same amount of wins? It seems unfair to let a team with more wins fall out of the playoffs because a lesser team can lose more games in overtime.

-- Seth Wano, Pittsburgh

MOLINARI: The only standings that really matter, at least for purposes of determining playoff berths or seedings, are the ones at the end of the season, at which point every team will have played 82 games.

While it certainly is possible for one team to have more points than another even if it has fewer victories by virtue of having more overtime/shootout losses than that other club, if the teams finish with the same number of points, total victories is the first tiebreaker when their point totals are equal.

That means, in certain cases, two points earned in a victory do carry more weight than two earned in a pair of overtime/shootout defeats. If the victory totals are identical, the second tiebreaker is head-to-head competition (assuming the number of home games in the season series was the same for both), followed by goals-for/goals-against differential.

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