It would be good if this proposal was on the table. It is more of a starting point for negotiation than anything that has been offered in the past.
However, I think there are several reasons that this proposal would not fly.
The biggest is defining designated hockey revenue. In order to make any sense of the NHL books, one must be a forensic accountant - and even then, there is no consensus of the current state of affairs. Most (if not all) financial numbers leaked to the media, must be taken with a grain of salt. They are propoganda in a labor war. They are hardly unbiased subjective numbers. Many are clearly laughable in that they make so sense whatsoever. This clearly leads to a mistrust between the NHLPA and NHL about any and all financial numbers. Defining hockey revenue in this situation is nearly impossible. In all likelihood, the definition will have loopholes (hard to imagine it could be perfect). It may miss out on some revenue streams that either exist today or may start in the near future and become significant as time passes. Being locked in for 12 years with a possibly poor DHR defition is a scary prospect for the NHLPA. Something that does not define revenue, allowing owners to set budgets as they see fit is preferable. Maybe an equitable defintion can be found - but I imagine more than likely, we would see another strike/lockout at the conclusion of this agreement which is based on trying to ammend a faulty DHR definition.
Payroll thresholds and minimums un der this kind of system would have to be tied to the DHR somehow and not fixed numbers as they appear in Burke's proposal. I imagine all that could be worked out. However, thresholds and minimums will limit the options of teams in the future. A team like Ottawa or Tampa Bay that build a very good team that can win several Stanley Cups will have no chance to do so under this poropsal. No way can the keep their core together under this system. The luxory tax as it stands is too high to give them any chance to chose to exceed the maximum payrolls. 500% luxory tax would prevent any team from attempting that (being 5 mill over threshold still has payroll in the $40 mill range without tax which is hardly unreasonable under the current CBA). Payroll minimums are also a problem. It forces a rebuilding to team to overpay some aging journeymen to fill roster spots that would be better used for cheap young guys with potential. Could Ottawa or Tampa Bay have become the team they are now if they were forced to keep up a minimum payroll which would require them signing 30 somethings to take playing time from the guys who developed into the stars of today? Their current stars would not have been given the chance to mature. Payroll thresholds and minimums enforce mediocrity through the league. As a fan, thats a bad situation.
Lowering UFA age is another step to make it harder to keep good teams together. If you produce a player who leaves as a UFA before he has the best seasons of his career with your team, you are making the value of scouting and player development far less. 29 is not nearly as bad as 27, but its a step in the wrong direction.
Making qualifying offers on players 50% or 75% of their current salary is problematic. There will be many situations where a player who is a solid successful 4th liner gets offered a contract with a pay cut and has two options. Take it or leave it. No leverage to do anything else.
Salary arbitration changes seem fair to me. Why not have a situation where all RFA's are scheduled to go to arbitration if they have received a qualifying offer and not signed any contract by mid-August? It would reduce the need for holdouts in the next season. That is a good thing. Following baseball's high/low system makes sense to me.
My opinion is the best CBA would be one where the current on is tweaked. Defining hockey revenues is such a complex problem, that it would likely lead to many more fights about interpretation of the defintion and how to handle revenue streams that emerge and are not discussed. Its probably best not to go there. Salary caps and floors lead to mediocrity. Its impossible to keep a good team together with a salary cap. Its rediculous to force a team that clearly should rebuild to ice a team of Mikko Eloranta and Matthew Barnaby types to take ice time from their cheap young players in order to reach a salary floor.
Reducing UFA age makes it hard for a team to keep talent they produced long enough for them to see the best years of the careers of that talent.
A luxory tax could be feasable, but it cannot be nearly as high a percentage as Burke has. It must be feasable for a team in an Ottawa sized market to keep together the talent that they produced without paying 500% tax. Obviously this money must be shared somehow. That creates the problem of salary floors or how to make sure that this money is re-invested into the team. These details, unless worked out properly, could kill this idea.
In closing, is anyone skeptical about Burke's proposal in that it may be NHL propoganda? Burke was vice president of the NHL in the past, and although being between NHL jobs (its just a matter of time before he gets hired) has always been quite loyal to the NHL's cause in the current NHL/NHLPA dispute. I think, this may be the NHL's way to try this proposal in the media without ever officially backing it. This is a negotiation ploy. They likely have more planned as time passes. This is the first attempt at a compromise the NHL has offered. Yet, they are not officially offering it, so if the NHLPA ever latched onto it, they are capable of negotiating it to better suit NHL causes using this as a guideline to begin negotiations.
