GDT: 2023 NHL ENTRY DRAFT June 28 and 29. First round and then rounds 2-7. (ESPN, NHL network, SN, TVA sports 4pm and 8am Pacific Time)

[LadyStanley]

Why not just have a cap, and let teams pay for players as they see fit? If a team wants to offer Bedard 10 million/8 years that's their right; they will live with the consequences. And then if an organization like Arizona is so dysfunctional that nobody wants to play there for "market rate", well that's them living with their incompetence.

Because owners (collectively) want "cost certainty". They locked out the players and lost a full season to force that.

 

[OrrNumber4]

Players union wouldn't want that - artificially limiting the available pool of players is good for their salaries.

Because owners (collectively) want "cost certainty". They locked out the players and lost a full season to force that.

The cap remains, so cost certainty is there.

 

[Shark in Hockeytown]

They get to play a children's game for millions of dollars because customers are willing to pay millions of dollars to watch them play, full stop. There's no good reason for there to be a draft beyond collusion between team owners to artificially control player salaries. European football works fine without a draft. Even from a team perspective you should want volunteers not conscripts.

European football does not work "fine." Bayern has won 10 titles in a row in Germany. England is more competitive, but the big teams win all the titles and Champions' League slots. PSG always wins the French title. In Spain, the only break in the Real Madrid/Barcelona competition for the title is the one year in a decade when Atletico Madrid slips in. Maybe the NHL needs promotion/relegation. It would be fun to see Hershey replace the Blackhawks in the NHL...

The salary cap produces competitive balances which allows teams outside the biggest revenue (Tampa, Pittsburgh, Vegas, Washington, Carolina, Anaheim all won the cup in the salary cap period). The big revenue teams (Toronto, NYR for two) tolerate it because they can make exceptional profits when the cap prevents them from spending more.

They get to play a children's game for millions of dollars because customers are willing to pay millions of dollars to watch them play, full stop. There's no good reason for there to be a draft beyond collusion between team owners to artificially control player salaries. European football works fine without a draft. Even from a team perspective you should want volunteers not conscripts.

European football does not work "fine." Bayern has won 10 titles in a row in Germany. England is more competitive, but the big teams win all the titles and Champions' League slots. PSG always wins the French title. In Spain, the only break in the Real Madrid/Barcelona competition for the title is the one year in a decade when Atletico Madrid slips in. Maybe the NHL needs promotion/relegation. It would be fun to see Hershey replace the Blackhawks in the NHL...

The salary cap produces competitive balances which allows teams outside the biggest revenue (Tampa, Pittsburgh, Vegas, Washington, Carolina, Anaheim all won the cup in the salary cap period). The big revenue teams (Toronto, NYR for two) tolerate it because they can make

 

[Hodge]

European football does not work "fine." Bayern has won 10 titles in a row in Germany. England is more competitive, but the big teams win all the titles and Champions' League slots. PSG always wins the French title. In Spain, the only break in the Real Madrid/Barcelona competition for the title is the one year in a decade when Atletico Madrid slips in. Maybe the NHL needs promotion/relegation. It would be fun to see Hershey replace the Blackhawks in the NHL...

The salary cap produces competitive balances which allows teams outside the biggest revenue (Tampa, Pittsburgh, Vegas, Washington, Carolina, Anaheim all won the cup in the salary cap period). The big revenue teams (Toronto, NYR for two) tolerate it because they can make exceptional profits when the cap prevents them from spending more.

The salary cap was never about competitive balance, it was about tying player salaries to a percentage of revenue in order to explode franchise values. Mission accomplished. If it was about competitive balance why isn't there a cap on how much teams can spend on coaches, management, training staff, analytics, practice facilities, etc.

Players and their talent are the only reason anyone watches professional sports. On a moral level, they deserve to have a say in where they live for 9 months per year and the organization they work for just like every other worker. Nobody should be forced to play for the Coyotes or live in Winnipeg if they don't want to. If that results in certain franchises no longer being viable, oh well.

 

[Shark in Hockeytown]

The salary cap was never about competitive balance, it was about tying player salaries to a percentage of revenue in order to explode franchise values. Mission accomplished. If it was about competitive balance why isn't there a cap on how much teams can spend on coaches, management, training staff, analytics, practice facilities, etc.

Players and their talent are the only reason anyone watches professional sports. On a moral level, they deserve to have a say in where they live for 9 months per year and the organization they work for just like every other worker. Nobody should be forced to play for the Coyotes or live in Winnipeg if they don't want to. If that results in certain franchises no longer being viable, oh well.

I agree that the owners wanted the cap to control player costs to increase profitability and franchise values. But the cap does help produce competitive balance. Look at your example of European soccer to see what happens when high revenue teams can spend freely on players. It produces a long-term hierarchy of a few high-revenue teams. The only way to break it is a billionaire spending his wealth on a vanity project (Chelsea, then Manchester City).

I also agree with you that players should have more freedom of movement. Michkov could influence what team selected him because he was in demand. Few draftees have that leverage.

 

[sharski]

Play by the rules or play in some other league. He could always stay in Russia. I'm sure he could find work in the army if he decided he didn't want to play hockey any more.

I kinda wish the Sharks would have drafted him just to piss him off. Hard sell w/ 4OA, but the kid is saying he's too good to go through the same process as everyone else. Not a fan of that. It'd be one thing if he didn't want to sign with the team that chose him because he'd be buried on the depth chart. It's another thing entirely to force the draft.

Also, WTF does this kid know about living in Philly. Or really anywhere in the states for that matter.

EDIT: oops, or Canada! Sorry Canada, didn't mean to exclude you.

 

[one2gamble]

Sounds good to me. It would make for a vastly more entertaining league.

But since that will probably never happen, in the meantime I'm fine with players trying to exercise some degree of control over their own futures.

No it wouldn't. It make an 8 to 10 team league with 3 or 4 actually competitive

 

[jMoneyBrah]

The salary cap was never about competitive balance, it was about tying player salaries to a percentage of revenue in order to explode franchise values. Mission accomplished. If it was about competitive balance why isn't there a cap on how much teams can spend on coaches, management, training staff, analytics, practice facilities, etc.

Players and their talent are the only reason anyone watches professional sports. On a moral level, they deserve to have a say in where they live for 9 months per year and the organization they work for just like every other worker. Nobody should be forced to play for the Coyotes or live in Winnipeg if they don't want to. If that results in certain franchises no longer being viable, oh well.

I think what is lost in this discussion, where one’s market philosophy is so strongly informing perspective, is that being a hockey player is a highly specialized discipline with an incredibly limited number of “seats” to fill. Supply, here, wildly outpaces demand.

It is not uncommon in other highly specialized industries that employment is contingent on relocating. Forgiving for my layman’s understanding, but perhaps rocket engineering or research may prove an illustrative example. If that is your chosen vocation, you really only have NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a handful of smaller startups and defense contractors. And that list is greatly expanded with the fairly recent additions of SpaceX and Blue Origin. In any case, any of the companies or NASA is gonna be like “welcome aboard, you’ll be reporting to Houston in two weeks, pack your bags”.

The point being, everyone knows this going into it. If this isn’t something you can live with, then the NHL isn’t the league one should pursue. A player isn’t required to register for the draft and is free to sign in any of the European leagues. They, of course, wouldn’t be eligible to play in the NHL - but that is an option they would be comfortable with making this choice. That no one that conceivably has an NHL shot is doing that is probably a good indicator that most are willing to live with the terms as they are.

Lastly, it’s not like this isn’t something that could be addressed by the CBA. That this is the format that has been arrived at over the course of decades of labor and management negotiations, including several rounds of stoppages, further confirms that the collective will is not there to tip things that far to favor individual liberties over the good of the collective. The draft, limited team control, salary cap, and free agency; overall, have balanced both labor and management’s interest pretty well.

IMO, the important part is that the actual people (labor as represented by the PA) have had, and continue to have, a say in this arrangement. This isn’t solely dictated by management and ownership. If one was so inclined, they could make the pitch for a draftless day-one unrestricted free agency arrangement to the PA, and an elected group of their peers could choose to push for it during the next CBA negotiations should they find that arrangement is beneficial to the collective.