With a new Collective Bargaining Agreement it to be negociated between the NHL and the NHLPA at the end of 2021, let's think a bit outside of the box.
It's not a secret that the sport has became a buisiness and unfortunately, not much more. It's all about profit, much less about passion. This focus on money has made the fans and the players drift apart slowly - with families with low income being unable to pay tickets for one single game, while the average salary of players as of 2018 is more than 3M$ a year.
The NHL has created a canevas for players to live as millionnaire, unaware of their privileges. For them, it's just normal to buy yacht - most of the times, they arent even aware of the social inequality
I'm not asking for them to earn less
They deserve their money. They entertain us. Owners make a butt load of profit. It's fair.
All I'm asking is for them to have a reminder of their status - and have them ponder on the affect of their salary on their destiny. For exemple, let's remember Luongo case which almost regretted signing his contract because he felt it was hurting everyone: himself, his teammate, the team.
My solution is to have every players wear on their ankles a little amount of dollars in a bag, strapped to their ankle. Not much : just enough for them to have a constant reminder they are lucky to get paid to move their feet.
And here's why it get interesting : the number of the pieces (so the total weight) would be proportional to the player salary. For exemple, Ovechkin with a 10M$ salary would be slowed down by a small bag of ten one dollar (which weight about 156 grams) - while someone winning only 2M$ like Alex Stalock would be dragging a mere 30 grams
It is not much - but it might be enough to get some players thinking : what if I sign for less, so I have to pull less weight when I'm on the ice? Is it worth signing for maybe a million less? Who know?
Just food for thoughts
