You're not wrong. It has created more balance than the pre cap days.
My issue I guess is in the definition - its either balanced or its not. i don't believe its balanced. i understand that's not the reason for the cap being there - I just made a point that fans' issues with the cap is that it didn't fix the imbalances, just shifted them to other teams.
Fans of the supposed "rich" teams spend crazy money on ticket prices and have tax disadvantages (as well as others). That's where the animosity lies IMO. Complete balance would be impossible to achieve considering the game is played in 2 different countries, but that doesn't mean work couldn't be done to mitigate some of these disadvantages/advantages.
It didn't shift anything to other teams, all teams have to abide by the hard cap. It doesn't create any imbalance, it forces all teams to the same salary limitations.
Fan spending has no bearing on league balance.
The tax thing is literally fans of shitty teams whining about why their teams sucks without looking at the real reasons. If the tax thing was such a huge advantage, the only teams that would be winning the cup would be Dallas, Tampa, Florida, Vegas and Seattle in the cap era, and as has been shown, that really isn't the case. Dallas up until the past couple years has mostly been irrelevant, Tampa had a run then fell to obscurity till a few years ago and are already trending back into bubble team, Florida is just starting to show up, Vegas had what has to have been one of the oddest inception drafts/player build ups I've ever seen.
Two countries is meaningless, players all paid in USD. It's not like Canadian teams take a 36% hit because their players are paid in CAD. If anything, the disparity in USD to CAD benefits Canadian team players.
Players have tax accountants and money managers that put them in the best tax advantaged situation possible. But again, fan spending has no bearing on balance. The real imbalances occur where coaching, scouting and non ice related costs are. Big market teams can spend significantly more to lure coaches, GMs, scouts, and analytics people than small market teams and despite that disparity, those same big market teams are still mostly non factors.