Someone find a hole in this idea...

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AvsGuy

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...because i can't, really, and i know it wouldn't work somehow, or else someone else would've thought of it.

---

Put NHL players on a wage instead of a salary. This would involve putting players from different positions into different categories, but hear me out.

If forwards earned a paltry(!) $75,000 for every point they scored, a 100 point scorer would earn $7.5 million / season. An 85 point scorer would earn $6.375 million / season, and so on. This would have to be adjusted somehow, because it doesn't really take into account defensive forwards, but the premise works.

For defensemen, maybe the same points-dollars ratio, as well as $10,000 for every point on their +-. Therefore, a defensive defensemen who only scores 17 points in a season, but who has a +- of +35, will earn $1.625 million / season. Again, reworkings could be done, but its fair.

Goaltending could be done something like this: ($5 million x the goalies SV%) - ($1 million x the goalie's GAA) + ($200,000 x the goalies number of SO's). By that formula, a goalie with a .929 SV%, with a 1.85 GAA and 8 shutouts, would earn $4.395 million / season.

Bottom line: anyone who is unsatisfied with the above salaries is too greedy to be deserving of life. NHL players are not Gods, they are employees, and they make good money. They would still earn good money by this system, if they wanted it bad enough, and this would help eliminate the problem of lazy players. It would also eliminate "salary dump" trades, and it would prevent owners from having to pay injured players. Tough luck for injured players, by the way. That's how it is.

The downside is that teams with lots of good players would be shelling out a fairly high amount of money in wages. But the likelihood is that a good team would sell out games, and be able to pay those wages. Whereas bad teams would correspondingly not have as high scorers, and therefore a lower payroll. ???

Anyways, tell me where I'm wrong, because this sounds pretty good to me.
 

Cwood2

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never.

How do you pay John Madden? or how about Adam Foote? There are a lot of players that are far more valuable than their point-producing peers. More well-rounded players, and goaltenders on bad teams are left in the cold by this measure.
 

JRgavemeaNTC

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Isn't keeping guaranteed contracts a sticking point in these negotiations? This would not be a guaranteed contract. Neat idea, but I don't think the players would ever go for it.
 

Trottier

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Bfen29 said:
How do you pay John Madden? or how about Adam Foote? There are a lot of players that are far more valuable than their point-producing peers. More well-rounded players, and goaltenders on bad teams are left in the cold by this measure.

Bingo. Respectfully, its a flawed and incomplete rotisserie-league-individual-offensive-statistics approach for evaluating players...In a decidely team sport (thankfully!), where one's play without the puck, defensive positioning, etc. are all critical factors to success...all of which are not easily measured/acknowledged through statistics.

You'd have a league of players not giving a hoot about defending their own end, for the selfish sake of padding their own numbers. Not unlike the NBA, where thoroughly incomplete players like Vince Carter, Tracy MacGrady, etc. are deemed "stars" :speechles , despite consistently exhibiting no desire whatsoever to work on defense. Which, come to think about it, may be exactly the type of river hockey garbage league some may desire, one where 10-9 scores are commonplace.
 
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LordHelmet

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AvsGuy said:
NHL players are not Gods, they are employees
No they aren't. They are the product. (ok, to avoid that whole discussion - they are the only people in the world that have the ability to provide their product.) Their skill is extremely rare, and their names, images, performances, and likenesses drive a 2 billion dollar industry - regardless of what statistics they put up.
 

garry1221

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i've said before, albeit with a hint of sarcasm that if the players really want to be treated as employees that the league should put up a timeclock in each dressingroom. the idea you propose, however, could work IMO. the only thing i see that could make it tricky would be those players who contribute more on a spiritual level so to speak, players like yzerman, sakic and others who make the team around them better even just by presence. lockerroom type guys who may not contribute as much on the ice as off the ice. other than that it's an interesting concept that even without a cap of any kind, could keep wages in check, yet allow for players to make as much as they can... should they produce (therefore figuring in more revenue due to more exciting games or just more games in general aka playoffs)
 

AvsGuy

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i guess i thought i acknowledged in the original post that the means of paying guys like John Madden and Adam Foote would be a sticking point. even so, with this system, John Madden (who could put up anywhere from 40-60 points, lets say) would make between $3 million and $4.5 million / season. And Adam Foote (for example, somewhere between 20-35 points, and lets say a +30) would make between $1.8 million and $2.925 million per season. what in God's name is wrong with those amounts of money for those players?

as for good goalies on bad teams, i guess something would have to be figured out. but with the formula i made, a good goalie on a bad team, whose stats are a .897 SV%, a 2.78 GAA, and 4 SO, he would still make $2.505 million dollars. If he's not happy with it, then he can get into real estate or something.

seriously, if the players wouldn't go for this, they need to realistically look at being out of jobs for a while. even with a new CBA, i can't picture them making a lot more than this.
 

MLH

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It would ruin the game. Stats and individual play would be come more important than winning. If you thought the players are money-driven now, I can't imagine how bad it would get with a system like this.
 

puck_it

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great idea. its been thought of before, but it wont fly with the palyers. plus theres the players that bring intangibles
 

AvsGuy

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MLH said:
It would ruin the game. Stats and individual play would be come more important than winning. If you thought the players are money-driven now, I can't imagine how bad it would get with a system like this.

how would eliminating lazy players ruin the game? and how would giving players an extra reason to score goals take away their desire to win? more goals = more wins. ??? i'm perplexed by your reasoning.
 

John Flyers Fan

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AvsGuy said:
i guess i thought i acknowledged in the original post that the means of paying guys like John Madden and Adam Foote would be a sticking point. even so, with this system, John Madden (who could put up anywhere from 40-60 points, lets say) would make between $3 million and $4.5 million / season. And Adam Foote (for example, somewhere between 20-35 points, and lets say a +30) would make between $1.8 million and $2.925 million per season. what in God's name is wrong with those amounts of money for those players?

The problem would be that Keith Primeau, the Flyers best player last year scored just 7 goals. John LeClair scored 23 goals. If you watched thr Flyers play last year you'd have seen that Primeau was worth at least twice as much as LeClair ... butif you just looked at the scoresheet LeClair would be worth 3 times as much.

Also, what happens if a player gets hurt ??? Their numbers would drop, and therefore salary would drop ???

Also what makes hockey and hockey players better than other athletes is that a guy like Simon Gagne, accepts the role Hitchcock gave him, and becomes a defensive stopper. His goal production drops, because he was sacrificing his personal stats for the betterment of the team.

If the system you proposed was in effect a player would ***** and moan and tell their agent to demand a trade.
 

wazee

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Trottier said:
Bingo. Respectfully, its a flawed and incomplete rotisserie-league-individual-offensive-statistics approach for evaluating players...In a decidely team sport (thankfully!), where one's play without the puck, defensive positioning, etc. are all critical factors to success...all of which are not easily measured/acknowledged through statistics.

You'd have a league of players not giving a hoot about defending their own end, for the selfish sake of padding their own numbers. Not unlike the NBA, where thoroughly incomplete players like Vince Carter, Tracy MacGrady, etc. are deemed "stars" :speechles , despite consistently exhibiting no desire whatsoever to work on defense. Which, come to think about it, may be exactly the type of river hockey garbage league some may desire, one where 10-9 scores are commonplace.

Exactly. I even have mixed feelings about the bonus clauses in contracts because they can lead to an emphasis on individual stats over the one stat that really counts, WINS.
 

AvsGuy

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John Flyers Fan said:
The problem would be that Keith Primeau, the Flyers best player last year scored just 7 goals. John LeClair scored 23 goals. If you watched thr Flyers play last year you'd have seen that Primeau was worth at least twice as much as LeClair ... butif you just looked at the scoresheet LeClair would be worth 3 times as much.

Also, what happens if a player gets hurt ??? Their numbers would drop, and therefore salary would drop ???

Also what makes hockey and hockey players better than other athletes is that a guy like Simon Gagne, accepts the role Hitchcock gave him, and becomes a defensive stopper. His goal production drops, because he was sacrificing his personal stats for the betterment of the team.

If the system you proposed was in effect a player would ***** and moan and tell their agent to demand a trade.


Could be you're right. i can certainly see your points.

however, if this system were put into place, the NHL would become an offensive show. turning guys like Simon Gagne into a defensive stopper would make no sense in a league like that, because his talents are better used elsewhere, obviously. again, the defensive forward thing could be a glitch.

also, i didn't watch the Flyers last year, but 7 goals for Keith Primeau cannot be called a success any way you look at it. regardless, if Keith Primeau is the team player you say he is, and if the Flyers had won the Cup, or even gone to the Finals, on Keith's 7 goals, and John's 23 goals, Keith shouldn't care that John is making 3 times what he is. if he's truly a leader, i wouldn't think he would.

i guess that's the main problem i'm trying to rectify. NHL players are in a business in which they will make relatively huge money no matter what they do. Under my system, i could score 1 NHL point and make more than double what i'm making now. any NHL player who would be offended by less then $1 million / season doesn't belong in the NHL, in my opinion, if his real concern is team success.

you can say it wouldn't work, and you'd probably be right, but what i'm saying is that it SHOULD.
 

Brodeur

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AvsGuy said:
i guess i thought i acknowledged in the original post that the means of paying guys like John Madden and Adam Foote would be a sticking point. even so, with this system, John Madden (who could put up anywhere from 40-60 points, lets say) would make between $3 million and $4.5 million / season. And Adam Foote (for example, somewhere between 20-35 points, and lets say a +30) would make between $1.8 million and $2.925 million per season. what in God's name is wrong with those amounts of money for those players?

John Madden averages like 35 points a season. Not sure where you came up with 40-60 points.

As JFF noted, you can't measure a hockey player's worth in terms of goals/assists. There are gonna be countless examples of where your idea wouldn't make sense. Defensive defensemen on a poor team won't have a very high +/- figure.

Last year, let's use Mattias Norstrom:

74 games 1-13-14 -3, and assuming you he doesn't lose money for being a minus player, Norstrom earned slightly over 1 million last year. Not every good defensive defenseman is gonna have a great +/- number, no matter how well he plays.

And maybe it's just me, but DEFENSEmen shouldn't be required to produce offense in order to be paid.

And it would create such a bad precedent for the next wave of players. Scoring points would suddenly be as important as winning the game.
 

Brodeur

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AvsGuy said:
Under my system, i could score 1 NHL point and make more than double what i'm making now. any NHL player who would be offended by less then $1 million / season doesn't belong in the NHL, in my opinion, if his real concern is team success.

And in your system, Mattias Norstrom is taking a 300% paycut. And last I checked, he's an actual NHL player who probably would take offense to this system.

Your system basically puts the focus on the individual, then you tell all the players who get screwed to focus on team success and not be greedy.
 

AvsGuy

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Brodeur said:
John Madden averages like 35 points a season. Not sure where you came up with 40-60 points.

so if he scored 35 points, he would earn, what, $2.6 million per year? not half bad if you ask me.

Last year, let's use Mattias Norstrom:

74 games 1-13-14 -3, and assuming you he doesn't lose money for being a minus player, Norstrom earned slightly over 1 million last year.

did Norstrom have a good year? because, as an outside observer, i would say no. and for a good player having an iffy year, slightly over $1 million is not underpayment. in fact, please give me an example of when $1 million / year is underpayment.

And maybe it's just me, but DEFENSEmen shouldn't be required to produce offense in order to be paid.

true. i tend to agree. which is why i've acknowledged that the idea would have to be reworked to be entirely fair. but do remember that hockey is primarily about scoring goals, and this is a fine way to increase goal scoring.

And it would create such a bad precedent for the next wave of players. Scoring points would suddenly be as important as winning the game.

ok, someone please tell me, am i wrong in thinking that by scoring more points, you are more likely to win the game? i don't really see what the problem is here. if you mean that it would give forwards less incentive to play defense, or back check, then i guess the forwards of the NHL would really need to examine what their true incentives were. if winning has become less important then making money, then why are they even playing in the NHL?
 

Brodeur

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AvsGuy said:
did Norstrom have a good year? because, as an outside observer, i would say no. and for a good player having an iffy year, slightly over $1 million is not underpayment. in fact, please give me an example of when $1 million / year is underpayment.

Because he was a minus player, he had a bad year? Despite the fact that he was the #1 defender on a bad team, Norstrom still should have been +15? Your argument affirms why Norstrom's not the best guy to have in fantasy hockey, but I don't agree with your argument that Norstrom suddenly became on par with some team's #6 defender.

A million for Norstrom is okay, and Cory Stillman getting 6 million is correct? Ask Vancouver fans who is better between Mattias Ohlund and Brent Sopel?

Basically, I can't justify a system where a PP specialist like Marek Zidlicky is suddenly being paid the same as a legit #1D like Niklas Lidstrom.
 

Trottier

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AvsGuy said:
...also, i didn't watch the Flyers last year, but 7 goals for Keith Primeau cannot be called a success any way you look at it. regardless, if Keith Primeau is the team player you say he is, and if the Flyers had won the Cup, or even gone to the Finals, on Keith's 7 goals, and John's 23 goals, Keith shouldn't care that John is making 3 times what he is. if he's truly a leader, i wouldn't think he would.

Again, this comment is not made in ill humor, but your comment points to the flaw of the system that you are promoting. Primeau was exponentially more valuable to the Flyers last season than was LeClair, even with having scored a paltry amount of regular season goals. (And his post-season play, i.e., the time of the year that matters most, was not just "successful," it was elite.) One who "didn't watch the Flyers" and instead based contributions on offensive numbers alone could understandably make that faulty assumption. If offensive numbers alone = worth, Marius Czerkawski, Sergei Berezin and their ilk would be Hall of Famers instead of out of NHL jobs.

Under my system, i could score 1 NHL point and make more than double what i'm making now.

And the guy selling hot dogs at the game probably laments that he could be making twice his annual pay were he to do just one month's work of the many "corporate suits" to whom he is selling. Life is unfair, you know? Comparing yourself (or me, or any non-professional player) to an NHLer is, well, a specious analogy.

any NHL player who would be offended by less then $1 million / season doesn't belong in the NHL, in my opinion....

Why? Because $1M sounds like a big ("fair") number to you? Who are we to impose our values, economic beliefs on others, regardless of their vocation? That is decided solely by the market, as defined by league revenues and how they are allocated, per the owners. And that is exactly what is being hammered out in the current CBA. As it should be. We can't simply pick an arbitrary number and deem it "enough!" for any individual, unless it is our business, or we are party to a collective bargaining agreement (i.e., a union). For one on the sidelines (read: us) to arbitrarily and causually pick a number that "sounds good" as a limit on another person's optimum earning power is anathema to basic free market values.

I mean, how much money should you be satisfied with? Suppose "we" decide that you "shouldn't be offended" making $15k max a year? I know I wouldn't like my earning power "determined" by anyone other than myself and my employer.

:)
 
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richardn

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I thought of a system like this before. But could never seem to find a way to get it to work to be fair for all players. It is an interesting idea but their are to many tangables for the sytem to run smoothly. I don't think the players would ever in a million years sign a CBA with this as the system. Would it work maybee. I like the pay system Vince McCman tried with the XFL.
 

AvsGuy

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Trottier said:
Why? Because $1M sounds like a big ("fair") number to you? Who are we to impose our values, economic beliefs on others, regardless of their vocation? That is decided solely by the market, as defined by league revenues and how they are allocated, per the owners. And that is exactly what is being hammered out in the current CBA. As it should be. We can't simply pick an arbitrary number and deem it "enough!" for any individual, unless it is our business, or we are party to a collective bargaining agreement (i.e., a union). For one on the sidelines (read: us) to arbitrarily and causually pick a number that "sounds good" as a limit on another person's optimum earning power is anathema to basic free market values.

I mean, how much money should you be satisfied with? Suppose "we" decide that you "shouldn't be offended" making $15k max a year? I know I wouldn't like my earning power "determined" by anyone other than myself and my employer.




:)

guess i got worked on that one. i can see where you're coming from, but it sounds more like you're pretty content to leave this whole CBA thing unresolved. a variation of some sort on this idea could work, but you're right, it'll never happen.
 

Trottier

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AvsGuy said:
guess i got worked on that one. i can see where you're coming from, but it sounds more like you're pretty content to leave this whole CBA thing unresolved. a variation of some sort on this idea could work, but you're right, it'll never happen.

No getting "worked". Just a friendly difference of opinion. And I respect the intent of your proposed system. :)
 

vanlady

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AvsGuy said:
i guess i thought i acknowledged in the original post that the means of paying guys like John Madden and Adam Foote would be a sticking point. even so, with this system, John Madden (who could put up anywhere from 40-60 points, lets say) would make between $3 million and $4.5 million / season. And Adam Foote (for example, somewhere between 20-35 points, and lets say a +30) would make between $1.8 million and $2.925 million per season. what in God's name is wrong with those amounts of money for those players?

as for good goalies on bad teams, i guess something would have to be figured out. but with the formula i made, a good goalie on a bad team, whose stats are a .897 SV%, a 2.78 GAA, and 4 SO, he would still make $2.505 million dollars. If he's not happy with it, then he can get into real estate or something.

seriously, if the players wouldn't go for this, they need to realistically look at being out of jobs for a while. even with a new CBA, i can't picture them making a lot more than this.

After watching the Bob McCown show today, I got a rude surprise that makes sense. Everyone assumes all the projections on last years revenue. However, after every major lockout in every league the league has suffered for a least a few years of reduced revenue.

So Steve Brun I beleive his name is, from the Globe and Mail, said what happens if revenues drop to 1 billion, well the caps now drop to 21 million top and 11 bottom. So if you take 24 players and pay them the league minimum $250,000 that is 6 million. On the low end that only leave 5 million and at the top it would be a maximum of another 15 million. So this translates into a league wide average salary of 875,000 not 1.3 million. Who are the players likely to suffer the most? Will the high end players still eat 90% of the salary and leave 15 guys on a team making league minimum?
 

Icey

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AvsGuy said:
...because i can't, really, and i know it wouldn't work somehow, or else someone else would've thought of it.

---

Put NHL players on a wage instead of a salary. This would involve putting players from different positions into different categories, but hear me out.

If forwards earned a paltry(!) $75,000 for every point they scored, a 100 point scorer would earn $7.5 million / season. An 85 point scorer would earn $6.375 million / season, and so on. This would have to be adjusted somehow, because it doesn't really take into account defensive forwards, but the premise works.

For defensemen, maybe the same points-dollars ratio, as well as $10,000 for every point on their +-. Therefore, a defensive defensemen who only scores 17 points in a season, but who has a +- of +35, will earn $1.625 million / season. Again, reworkings could be done, but its fair.

Goaltending could be done something like this: ($5 million x the goalies SV%) - ($1 million x the goalie's GAA) + ($200,000 x the goalies number of SO's). By that formula, a goalie with a .929 SV%, with a 1.85 GAA and 8 shutouts, would earn $4.395 million / season.

Bottom line: anyone who is unsatisfied with the above salaries is too greedy to be deserving of life. NHL players are not Gods, they are employees, and they make good money. They would still earn good money by this system, if they wanted it bad enough, and this would help eliminate the problem of lazy players. It would also eliminate "salary dump" trades, and it would prevent owners from having to pay injured players. Tough luck for injured players, by the way. That's how it is.

The downside is that teams with lots of good players would be shelling out a fairly high amount of money in wages. But the likelihood is that a good team would sell out games, and be able to pay those wages. Whereas bad teams would correspondingly not have as high scorers, and therefore a lower payroll. ???

Anyways, tell me where I'm wrong, because this sounds pretty good to me.

This is exactly why teams frown on player incentive bonuses. The player starts playing for the themselves instead of the team.

Plus you have defensemen who never score a point, yet they contribute to the team.

You have 4th liners who's job it is not to score but to check.

It will never work and neither the owners nor the players would ever go for it.

But an idea I had once was to pay the player for the position he signed for. In other words a forward who is signed to play the first line is paid $X, a forward who is signed to play 3rd line gets a different amount. Players would have to be classified. This would avoid teams loading up with star talent because they couldn't pay them all the same. It would also force teams to pay for their talent. So a first line forward would make between $5-7M, they would have to be paid that. Teams like Atlanta or Nashville couldn't pay them $2M.

It would probably be too hard to classify the players, but I think it would help keep salaries in line and spread the talent through out the league.
 
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