The league is not legally allowed to centrally control its spending outside of a negotiated CBA and therefore teams were spending what they wanted regardless of what the other teams could afford. The PA, which is allowed to centrally control its asking prices, always set the standard at the highest possible level, meaning that if one team opted for a payroll of 80 million (whether or not it could afford it), all players would ask for salaries as if every team was on a 80 million dollar payroll. This situation is uncontrollable without a CBA that stops it; any attempt to do otherwise would have opened the door to collusion claims, which of course Strachan routinely made anyways.
Bob Goodenow, therefore, DID stand in the way of the league controlling its spending in the only way that it logically could - through CBA controls. He got burned for it and the evidence is that smear mark all the way to the curb.
Unless the teams that didn't have the 80 million payroll wanted to keep their players, that is.
They tried what you're claiming they should have done the last three years. It didn't help. There was no way for the league to do it. The players didn't seem to realize that. They also didn't realize that as by far the most major beneficiaries, the clawback had to come from them. 80% of the fans knew it, though.
The PA apologist argument is based on the idea that all that had to happen to control salaries was for Detroits and Torontos to not spend 80 million. But those teams can afford to, quite easily. The old deal allowed them to, over Bettman's objections at the time. This may be great for Detroit and Toronto but it's bad for the league as a whole. The players compounded this through their greed, orchestrated by Goodenow, by centrally managing contracts so that all players judged their worth according to the highest payroll. This caused a death spiral which the league saw coming and the PA did not, still thinking they were on the same level of national attention as say, MLB players.
The correction is done now. The players have found out they're *not* on the same level as MLB players and Goodenow has faced the music for making them believe they were.
Good riddance to the worst thing in hockey.
Shills love to bring this up, but once they look at the *facts* of where in the league's payroll every Cup winner was, it quickly fades away. I forget who posted that originally, but hopefully they put it up again for the shills to see. Not sure if reckoning dares learn the truth or not; I think he prefers rhetoric to facts.