To summarize the foolish spending by the New York Rangers that set the standard for signing players....
The Rangers started it all with the $7M per year contract offer to Joe Sakic who was a restricted free agent at the time, forcing Colorado to match. They were "forced" to match. Here is a blurb from an article...
Rangers general manager Neil Smith said New York deliberately frontloaded its offer to Sakic with a $15 million signing bonus, hoping it would discourage Colorado from matching it. "We had the ability to pay a large signing bonus," he said. "We did it that way to get Joe, and because maybe it would not be matched." Smith said Colorado's decision to match sent an important message around the NHL. "You're not going to sign a Group II free agent off the Avalanche," he said. "They've stepped up and proven that."
The Rangers would then go on to sign Mike Keane (4yr,$8M), Brian Skrudland (3yr,$5.2M), Scott Fraser (3yr,$4M), John MacLean (3yr,$7.2M), Mike Richter re-signed for 4 years, $21.8M. They signed just about any free agent out there, even if they didn't need them; Brent Fedyk... Zarley Zalapski. Neil Smith sent Petr Popovic along with $2.1M in cash to get Kevin Hatcher from the Penguins (who was making $3.1M already).
They go on to sign Theo Fleury (3yr,$21M). They also go on to sign Stephane Quintal (4yr,$11.4M), Valeri Kamensky (4yr,$17M), Kirk McLean, Tim Taylor (4yr,$5.8M) and Sylvain Lefebrve (4yr,$10M) all to ridiculous contracts.
They decide to bring back Mark Messier (2yr,$11M). Sign Vladimir Malakhov (4yr,$14M). Think they learned their lesson after years of failures? Of course, they fire Neil Smith and bring in Glen Sather.
What does Sather go on to do? Sign Bobby Holik (5yr,$45M), Darius Kasparaitis (6yr,$25.5M) Greg de Vries (4yr,$13M).
All of these contracts priced out other teams and drove up the asking price for #3-4-5-6 dmen and checking line forwards.
I attribute this big financial mess the NHL is in in large part thanks to the New York Rangers. In 1999, the Rangers had 13 players in the top 100 list of highest paid players.
The reason a player like Aaron Miller is making over $3M is thanks to the New York Rangers. The Rangers set the "market value" for marginal players. In order for teams like the Flyers and Leafs and Wings to compete, they did the same. Dallas and Colorado got a taste of a Stanley Cup and did the same thing. When players see other skaters of their caliber earning big money in NY, they want a similar paycheck, thus pricing out some teams who can't afford to match some of their ridiculous demands. See Alexei Yashin and Michael Peca as examples of players holding out to get what they want.
The foolish spending of a select few teams has hurt the league and had an impact on every team in the National Hockey League. That is why a salary cap is needed, and the NHLPA has openly accepted that. Hopefully logic prevails and we will be prepping for the draft this June, eagerly await the free agent signing period to begin in July, have the 2005-2006 schedule released in August, and have players start preparing and arriving to training camps in September.