Brooks:NHL's Salary Cap was actually less

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AlexGodynyuk

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MarkTinordi24 said:
Simple solution:

Abolish guaranteed contracts (after the owners bring the NHLPA to their knees ofcourse)

Then you can have a cap structure like the NFL (outside of signing bonuses which would be not allowed)

BAM!

The injury thing will have to be worked out. I'm not sure if you can cut an injured player under the NFL system.
The next issue to this is revenue sharing. The NFL works because all teams are fairly even in terms of revenue (large percentage comes from league-wide TV deal, no local TV deals, pretty much all teams have solid attendance).
In the NHL, how do you convince the 6 or so teams that are bringing in the bulk of the revenue to share it equally with the other 24? How do you say to Toronto: all that money that could be profit, well, give it to the other teams. These guys are businessmen.
 

Old Hickory

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gc2005 said:
Okay fine, the Kings smashed the injury record by 10%. If it does happen once every few years to one team, as you stated, then it stands to reason it could quite easily happen at least once in a 6 year CBA. Maybe only 8 guys injured at once. Point being, some team could easily be screwed with a bunch of injured guys and zero cap room. The league has to think of and prepare for every possible scenario, no matter how seemingly unlikely, when it goes through the small print of a final CBA.
The injury record was held by the 91-92 Bruins, not the Habs

Kings left winger Alexander Frolov, the team's leader in goals with 24, was a healthy scratch at Calgary Saturday. ... With 609 man-games lost to injury this season, Los Angeles has broken the unofficial record of 573 set by the Boston Bruins in 1991-92.
http://www.nhl.com/intheslot/read/west/west_notebook040104.html
 
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Tinordi24*

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alexmorrison said:
The next issue to this is revenue sharing. The NFL works because all teams are fairly even in terms of revenue (large percentage comes from league-wide TV deal, no local TV deals, pretty much all teams have solid attendance).
In the NHL, how do you convince the 6 or so teams that are bringing in the bulk of the revenue to share it equally with the other 24? How do you say to Toronto: all that money that could be profit, well, give it to the other teams. These guys are businessmen.

Agreed. But in the current NHL 70 percent of the teams are LOSING money! The ones making money dont want to start losing money too! If they shared revenues (losses) then EVERY team would be unprofitable.

It works in the NFL because they control their costs and have a huge TV contract!

The NHL doesnt have the latter so they have to TIGHTEN the costs to no end!

I dont even think a 35 mil cap is the solution! The NHL would THRIVE with a 20-30 million cap and then you can have revenue sharing and make EVERYONE happy!
 

AlexGodynyuk

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MarkTinordi24 said:
Agreed. But in the current NHL 70 percent of the teams are LOSING money! The ones making money dont want to start losing money too! If they shared revenues (losses) then EVERY team would be unprofitable.

It works in the NFL because they control their costs and have a huge TV contract!

The NHL doesnt have the latter so they have to TIGHTEN the costs to no end!

I dont even think a 35 mil cap is the solution! The NHL would THRIVE with a 20-30 million cap and then you can have revenue sharing and make EVERYONE happy!
Except the players who see Toronto/Philly/Colorado raking in huge revenues off their game and paying out small salaries.
Given the financial landscape of the NHL (and especially given the owner's reluctance to revenue sharing and salary floors), I don't think a hard-cap is the right system. Of course a total free-market is not the right answer either.
A system like the NBA's would allow the big market's to spend and the small markets to still compete.
Set a soft cap at $28 Million (linked to 45% of Hockey Income). Teams can only go over the cap to re-sign their own players or to sign players for the league minimum.
Set a second cap at $35 Million (linked to 58% of Hockey Income), once teams cross this threshold, they are subject to a dollar for dollar luxury tax that will be distributed evenly between all teams under it.
There would be other rules (based on contract length, etc...), but I think that a basic set-up like this would be the start of a workable solution as it offers the best of both worlds.
 

Ola

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PecaFan said:
Remember when everyone bristled at the "cap is a magnet" comments of Bettman? Yet most comments here are assuming that teams will be right at the cap level, and won't be able to deal with injuries, etc?

Boy do we get to see the usual twist from the Bettman supporters, altough its getting lamer and lamer... :)

You know thats kind of the issue. All everyone is saying is that it wouldn't work beeing close to the cap limit?(is that hard to understand??? :help: ) I mean its not like it would be a problem with thoose issues if the cap was at 75 million...

The top salary teams would be in the neighborhood of 36-37 million gooing into a season. The cheap teams could be competetive(possible contenders) around 20-25 million. Teams who are rebuilding or really cheap could drop as far as 10-15 million... Then what averege salary would you get?

How would a offer you felt was unfair for the players look like?

However from my point of view thats not even the issue in my opinion. I want hockey. In order to get hockey the NHL(owners) needs to make a deal with the NHLPA, or the other way around. I could care less whats fair or not fair... I am pissed at the owners because they have gotten the players to a point where they could without a doubt get a deal thats workable for atleast 28 teams in the league. They are even pushing for a deal that would take away some of the NHL's dominating position. AK Bar Kazan have a roster budget around 30-35 millon USD...

Another issue is that maybe the owners wasn't to found about having a 28 game season. A season that could have been the worst ever played in the NHL league for several reasons(players beeing out of shape, no time to markening it or imposse crackdowns on obstructions ect.). Personally I am just fine with that and if thats the case support the owners in their decision.

The details thats been reveled from the owners offers kind of show just how serious they were and its really funny when you think about what Bettman said after the meeting in NY about them beeing set up and all. Funny indead. It can't be a suprise to anyone that the PA turned down that offer....
 

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RangerBoy said:
Bettman was going around telling everyone that the cap was $42.5 million.It was not.This is the same guy who proposed the trigger offer to the NHLPA knowing that those triggers would be meet as soon as the NHL reopened their doors.The guy is a blinking clown

Just to make a point. The owner's cap proposal WAS $42.5M. They might have included some things as counting against the cap the players didn't like because it would limit the number of loopholes.

It's the loopholes that make or break a deal like this. The players would of been much better off agreeing to a lower cap number, but try and "sneak in" exceptions (aka - the Larry Bird exception, etc).

I think this was probably just another case of the players not understanding the owners "Monday" offer. Linden & Saskin both said they were "surprised" by the details of the owners offer when both sides met on Saturday.
 

NewGuy

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alexmorrison said:
So, ideally you are saying that player contracts should be 3 years (another reason why players don't like the cap).
Ideally you have enough roster turnover each year so that you can keep your core players and jettison any complementary players. From a team perspective it makes sense to try to lock in younger players on longer contracts and give short contracts to veterans who may not have much left.

alexmorrison said:
It gets very hard to manage this, as expiring contracts become valuable trading tools for teams looking to make a run.
I'm not implying that it will be easy. Teams will have to carefully manage their contracts so they don't have to let go of their core players when it comes time to give them a raise.
 

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gc2005 said:
These examples aren't extreme, not even hypothetical, it happened to the Kings. They had at least 10 players out, and had to bring in 10 players. If they only had $3 million in cap room, they could only bring in 10 players at the league minimum ($300k). If they only had $2 million in cap room, they'd have to get rid of one or two higher priced guys to create more cap room, then bring in 12 ridiculously cheap players.
You're right it's not extreme. It's ridiculously extreme.
gc2005 said:
As for loading up for the playoffs, use a $30 million payroll up until the trade deadline, then acquire like crazy. If you're paying $30 million for 3/4 of the season, you can pay $70 million for the last quarter, and it averages out to $40 million for the year. Boston grabbed up Gonchar, last year, who knows, maybe they could have got Kovalev, Leetch and Hasek all at the same time. They'd be way over $40 million, but is that okay?
Never ever gonna happen in a hard cap environment. A true grasping of the straws.
gc2005 said:
Don't accuse me of using far-fetched examples, to dismiss something that is entirely possible as "lacking common sense" or "grasping at straws" is a little close minded. You want a cap without loopholes, you better figure out all the possibilities before teams discover these loopholes.
Too late!
 

Drury_Sakic

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PecaFan said:
Injured players are counted because you're still paying them. This prevents little "you're still hurt, aren't you? <wink wink, nudge nudge>" games.

No, you arn't paying them in many situations, an insurance company(either paid for by the team or the player) is... so if you want to put the cap on owner/team expense, then you can only cap what the team is paying the insurance company, not what the insurance company pays the player.
 

Old Hickory

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Drury_Sakic said:
No, you arn't paying them in many situations, an insurance company(either paid for by the team or the player) is... so if you want to put the cap on owner/team expense, then you can only cap what the team is paying the insurance company, not what the insurance company pays the player.
Each team only insured it's highest paid three or four players. There is a waiting period of like 15 games and they only recoup 80% of the salary
 

kerrly

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alexmorrison said:
Right, and who's going to take on your high-priced talent in a cap world?
In the old system Toronto, Philly, and others were there to take on other teams mistakes (ex. Owen Nolan), in a cap system no team is going to want to take on a high priced veteran for young talent (especially since the team taking on the high-priced veteran would have to be sufficiently under the cap to afford him which would rule out most of the teams who would have taken him on in the old system as they will be close to the cap).

You're right, noone is going to take on mistakes. Thus leaving the teams who signed that player to pay the price for him.

There will be teams with some cap room looking to make a push, and will want to acquire a veteran or star to help them do that. This will have to acquired by giving up young talent. This all falls under the ability to manage your team successfully. Their will be 30 different teams and all will have different situations, there will be buyers and sellers, and teams that stay put. There will be teams that will take players off other teams hands because they no longer can afford them provided they are getting paid a reasonable amount, mistakes will not be swapped as easily in the past, and I see zero problem with this.

Each team will also have a certain amount of contracts to come up at the end of each season, if they are close to the cap some tough decisions will be have to be made, which require foresight and good talent assessment along with the ability to assess the team's current position. i.e. good managerial skills. RFA's can be left unqualified and players coming up on UFA status will have to be closely looked at to determine the value to the team/cap space ratio. I would like to see the UFA age dropped to at least 29, but there are still other ways to keep yourself under the cap. If a GM has his team loaded with long-term pricy contracts, then he has failed and will have to do whatever possible to get under.

This new system will make owners think twice about what they are offering to their players, and keep the teams and GM's that started the inflation in the past, to make more reasonable offers for fear of hurting the team. There is no doubt this will happen, because the ability to buy yourself out of mistakes is almost completely eliminated. The top managed teams will rise to the top within time, and the worst will sink to the bottom. I cannot wait for a system like this where hockey smarts will actually help you win instead of the almighty dollar.
 

me2

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Levitate said:
with the AHL contracts thing...i wonder if that just counts towards guys with two-way contracts, or all minor leaguers on the farm team? i can't imagine they could make AHL contracts (as in AHL contracts, not two-way contracts with the NHL and AHL) count towards the NHL parent teams cap, it'd make no sense. even though the AHL is a feeder league for the NHL, it's still it's own league and can sign players without being attached to NHL teams...

They would only be for AHLers that have been sent down by their NHL clubs. Any AHLers signed by their AHL club wouldn't count, since the don't belong to the NHL club.

Why would the NHL want this? Two words for you: Cujo & Wings.

If you make big free agent purchases you can't escape responsibility for you actions by sending them to the minors and pretending they don't exist. You can't abuse the system by stockpiling the minor league club with NHLers in case of injury. If a team has massive funds they could abuse the system mightily with these deals. Under this proposal having Cujo stashed in the minors is going to cost the Wings a massive amount of cap space. They would be better of paying some of his contract and sending him to another club.

Cujo type deals aside, would it make much difference if teams are not abusing the farm club system? No. Most of the guys on the farm are young or journeymen, they will be on cheap 2-way contracts. Even if they did qualify we aren't taking a lot of money unless there is Cujo down there somewhere...
 

me2

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RangerBoy said:
Contract buyouts would count against the cap?How does the NHL expect teams to get under the salary cap?Don't bring up this idiotic idea of a dispersal draft.If the 24% rollback by the NHLPA is off the table

I think the NHL will want to keep the rollback. Its not going to affect a lot of players, most are off contract. If they do pull it off the table it destroys the richer clubs ability to work in the UFA market, which in turn has a flow on effect to every other player.

Ie if Pronger and Neidermay can't get more than $3-4m because TO/Wings/Flyers etc are over cap then clubs can threaten their RFAs with picking up a dirt cheap UFA. RFA caves, every other team uses the caved contract in arbitration against their RFAs. Big downwards salary spiral, something the NHLPA will want to avoid.


and buyouts count against the cap,the big market teams will need to have 10 minor leaguers on each roster to field a team.I am a fan of big market team who is 70%-30% on the NHL's side but the NHL needs to put some easier transitions rules in place.If there is no grandfathering,no rollback and the buyout option is off the table,then having a cap in the mid-$30 million range with linkage plus all of the other bells and whistles will lead to some pathetic teams charging $125 per ticket :shakehead

Simple if they want to grandfather it in

1. they can't re-sign any UFAs (theirs or anyone elses).
2. payroll can not between years until they are under the cap.

Eventually they will have to come down in payroll. I'd be happier to see grandfathering, but it wouldn't surprise me if the richer clubs are the ones against it (see RFA/UFA market argument). They don't want to get stuck in no mans land for 3 years.
 

me2

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Chili said:
Exactly. You have a $7 million player on the IR before the season starts? You'd already be at disadvantage missing that player and unable to go out and replace him. Don't like that one, unless there would be exemptions for players missing at least X number of games to injury(i.e. 25-40 games).


I don't like it either. But now you replace the $7m player with another $7m player, no problems until the 1st $7m player comes back. Now you are $7m over the cap? Disqualified from the season for violating the cap? Release the $7m replacement, how? Why would a quality $7m player sign if he knew he wouldn't last 40 games before being dumped?

If the injured player is out for a year or more (Allison) its not a problem, but if its 30-50 games its a very tricky situation.
 

me2

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alexmorrison said:
Why has no one from the NHL side addressed the issue of how a hard cap will work with guaranteed contracts?
Example. Ottawa is gearing up for a run to the cup. They are close to the cap. Come the offseason, Redden and Chara both go to arbitration and get raises. Now they can't fit both players under the cap. Because everyone else has guaranteed contracts, they will have to walk away from one of these 2.
In the NFL teams would cut a couple of over-priced veterans, and keep their young core intact.

They trade one, or they trade someone else.
 

me2

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NewGuy said:
That would be terrible management by Ottawa and they would only have themselves to blame. Alternatively they could buy out enough players at 2/3 of their contract to make room for Redden and Chara and fill the empty spots with lower paid players.

This does bring up the point of how arbitration and qualifying offers will be handled. Arbitration probably needs to come first in the new system so that teams have an idea of what their payroll is before they have to hand out qualifying offers.


So long as they are under by game X (probably game 1 or game 10) of the season it should be ok. This gives teams a month to get their contracts back down under the cap.
 

Wetcoaster

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Steve L said:
Do you not understand the concept of putting things into proposals as bargaining tools?
I thought this was a take it or leave it offer from the NHL?????
 

me2

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gc2005 said:
These examples aren't extreme, not even hypothetical, it happened to the Kings. They had at least 10 players out, and had to bring in 10 players. If they only had $3 million in cap room, they could only bring in 10 players at the league minimum ($300k). If they only had $2 million in cap room, they'd have to get rid of one or two higher priced guys to create more cap room, then bring in 12 ridiculously cheap players.

As for loading up for the playoffs, use a $30 million payroll up until the trade deadline, then acquire like crazy. If you're paying $30 million for 3/4 of the season, you can pay $70 million for the last quarter, and it averages out to $40 million for the year. Boston grabbed up Gonchar, last year, who knows, maybe they could have got Kovalev, Leetch and Hasek all at the same time. They'd be way over $40 million, but is that okay?

Don't accuse me of using far-fetched examples, to dismiss something that is entirely possible as "lacking common sense" or "grasping at straws" is a little close minded. You want a cap without loopholes, you better figure out all the possibilities before teams discover these loopholes.


Does anyone else know how they deal with this in other capped leagues, US soccer, NFL, NBA, English Rugby?
 

Drury_Sakic

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me2 said:
I don't like it either. But now you replace the $7m player with another $7m player, no problems until the 1st $7m player comes back. Now you are $7m over the cap? Disqualified from the season for violating the cap? Release the $7m replacement, how? Why would a quality $7m player sign if he knew he wouldn't last 40 games before being dumped?

If the injured player is out for a year or more (Allison) its not a problem, but if its 30-50 games its a very tricky situation.


Its not about signing a replacement so much as the ability to trade for one at the deadline..

Say Colorado gets hit with its usual Forsberg injury and he is out for the rest of the season(for sure), they should be able to remove that from the cap(or at least a great deal of it) and trade for a replament player..

The idea is that you have the ablity to trade for a replacement for the stretch run who you presumably let go as an UFA come summer...thus creating no cap issue..
 

Drury_Sakic

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me2 said:
Does anyone else know how they deal with this in other capped leagues, US soccer, NFL, NBA, English Rugby?

You cannot backload your cap space from what I know in any league..

50 million is still 50 million half ways through a season...

another safeguard that I would not mind seeing is a 60-40 trade clause, meaning a team cannot gain or lose more than 60-40 in a trade..The NBA has a similar deal.

So you cannot trade Chris Prongers 10 million contract for John Doe's 100k...

This prevents rapid shifts in payrolls and exploitation of some teams as has happened in the past.
 

me2

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gc2005 said:
As for loading up for the playoffs, use a $30 million payroll up until the trade deadline, then acquire like crazy. If you're paying $30 million for 3/4 of the season, you can pay $70 million for the last quarter, and it averages out to $40 million for the year. Boston grabbed up Gonchar, last year, who knows, maybe they could have got Kovalev, Leetch and Hasek all at the same time. They'd be way over $40 million, but is that okay?

That depend on the wording, whether it is $cap max at any point during the seaon OR $cap = total paid out.

Lets assume it is total paid out. So Boston does load up big time? And that is a problem? Every other team is free to do the same, nobody is forcing them to spend to the cap number so they can't do deadline deals. It might make deadline deals more value for the team losing the player (salary paid = more value for buyer).

The only downside for Boston is the could have traded away 2 years worth of draft picks and a couple of quality prospects. What are they going to do for the next 2 years when the suck and have nothing left to trade, and no 1st rounder to get a quality prospect for their suckage.

Don't accuse me of using far-fetched examples, to dismiss something that is entirely possible as "lacking common sense" or "grasping at straws" is a little close minded.


Why do you think the closed a whole bunch of them (see the Wings minor league storage of Cujo). If there is no IR relief there is no IR relief, all teams are stuck with the same rule. Plan for it.


You want a cap without loopholes, you better figure out all the possibilities before teams discover these loopholes.

If Boston want to pull the above stunt you mentioned, then let them. One good year for multiple years of misery. A lot of NFL clubs found that out when signing bonus "loophole" became a noosehole and they hung themselves.
 

Cawz

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Wetcoaster said:
I thought this was a take it or leave it offer from the NHL?????
Do you actually believe that, or are you just trying to be argumentative? (Yes, I know, its a rhetorical question.)

Theres no take it or leave it offers, no stance is absolute, everything is negotiable etc etc...
 

me2

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Drury_Sakic said:
Its not about signing a replacement so much as the ability to trade for one at the deadline..

Say Colorado gets hit with its usual Forsberg injury and he is out for the rest of the season(for sure), they should be able to remove that from the cap(or at least a great deal of it) and trade for a replament player..

The idea is that you have the ablity to trade for a replacement for the stretch run who you presumably let go as an UFA come summer...thus creating no cap issue..


That is Ok when they are out during the season, its the starting the season that is tricky and a player comes back mid-way because now you are over cap.

A clause that might work and is simple is if a player is injury and placed on the cap exempt IR then that player can not return until the team can fit him under the cap.

So if the Avs replace Forsberg (injured in game 40 and not expected to return for the season) with Pierre Turgeon and Forsberg miraculously comes back to full health then the Avs are required to sit him until they have enough free cap space. This could see them sit a health Forsberg during the playoffs if they can't find someone to take Turgeon.

Seems fair, if Forsberg is really out for the season they have a replacement. If the Avs are trying to stockpile talent on the sly, then they get caught out.
 

me2

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Drury_Sakic said:
You cannot backload your cap space from what I know in any league..

50 million is still 50 million half ways through a season...

another safeguard that I would not mind seeing is a 60-40 trade clause, meaning a team cannot gain or lose more than 60-40 in a trade..The NBA has a similar deal.

So you cannot trade Chris Prongers 10 million contract for John Doe's 100k...

This prevents rapid shifts in payrolls and exploitation of some teams as has happened in the past.

I like the "no going over cap at any point based on players on the team at that point (plus any buyouts)". I'm not so sure about the 60-40 because teams often trade draft picks and prospects for stars at the deadline, which can help both teams.
 

Drury_Sakic

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me2 said:
I like the "no going over cap at any point based on players on the team at that point (plus any buyouts)". I'm not so sure about the 60-40 because teams often trade draft picks and prospects for stars at the deadline, which can help both teams.


I understand that, but I think that is one of the things that has hurt the NHL in some cases.... flopping around talent like that is just wrong IMO.. and I am a BIG fan of the BIGGEST abuser of that example...

If the league is serious about keeping all 30 teams competitive, this would be one way to help.. Plus.. it would create a more stable roster... I think if the NHL wants to grow the game, the names and faces need to start being more conisitant over time, so that a causual fan can start identifying with players and perhaps watch more hockey because they like that player..but thats just me..
 
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