For those of you who didn't catch it on TV, here are the highlights:
1. A hard cap of $6 million on individual player salaries with no cap on how much teams may spend on total payrolls
2. A dollar for dollar, or 100 per cent, luxury tax on all team payrolls in excess of $40 million with the tax monies to be redistributed to those teams with payrolls of less than $40 million but more than $30 million.
3. A revamped salary arbitration system that allows the teams, as well as the players, to file for arbitration and baseball style "final-offer" arbitration
4. Liberalized free agency with the age for unrestricted status moving to age 30 or after 10 years service in the NHL, whichever comes first.
5. Qualifying offers to be 75 per cent of the player's most recent salary level
6. An entry-level salary and signing bonus cap of $850,000 per year, with no more than 25 per cent of that amount in signing bonus, plus allowable performance bonuses to another $850,000, effectively capping entry-level salaries at no more than $1.7 million a year.
My take:
1. I'm not sure that a cap on player salary is going to be good enough. If players know what their limits are, how many do you think are going to push to get it. So while you won't have anyone making more that that, I think you'll end up with a lot more hitting the $6 M ceiling, so the net effect might be the same.
2. No problems with this, except double the tax if teams go above $50 M
3. Perfect as is.
4. No issues with this
5. Any number between 60-75% is good, and definitely better than the current rules of 100-110%.
6. I say make the whole rookie-salary fiasco idiot proof and cap the whole thing (salary and bonus) at $1 M and be done with it.
You can get all the details here:
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/feature.asp?fid=9997