Tom_Benjamin said:
Not at all. It is there position that the players collectively are overpaid by 30%. Change the system to an NBA model and the best players will probably get more.
I don't follow the NBA remotely. I do know that it's a sport played by tall men, and involves throwing some kind of ... round thing at a hoop on a pole, but that's about it. However, I find the notion that the salaries of the top players will actually increase under a cost-controlled system is hard to buy into.
I suggest that basketball and hockey are very different sports, and the rationale for paying a star basketball player doesn't necessarily apply to hockey. How many players on a basketball roster? 12, right? How many players dress for a game? 8, right? In hockey it's 23 and 20, respectively. In basketball, top players play over 3/4 of each game. In the NHL, very few forwards play more than 40% of a game, and only a few defensemen play more than 50%. The one case where the NHL team could get the same mileage out of a star player as an NBA team gets out of a star player is in the case of a goalie who'll start 60+ games.
I don't know how it has worked in the NBA, but in the NHL we've seen examples where teams devoting a significant portion of their payroll to 1 or 2 stars at the expense of depth has been a mistake. I can only assume that in a cost-controlled league, that effect would be magnified.
Leaving that aside, how would teams actually free up all of this money? I don't know how they do it in the NBA, but simple math says the logistics have to be simpler. Just to pick an NBA roster at random, the Timberwolves have a $64 million payroll, with Garnett making $16 million, Sprewell making $14 million, Sczerbiak making $9 million, and 4 other players making between 4 and 6 million.
If, say, the Timberwolves wanted to make a $15 million offer to Player X, how do they free up the money? Well, they could...
-trade Garnett
-not make an offer to Sprewell after his contract expires
-trade Sczerbiak and one of the guys making 4-6 million
-not make an offer to 2 of the guys making 4-6 million after the year, and trade another.
Now, say the Oilers (or some other team operating within a $31 million salary cap) wanted to acquire Jaromir Jagr. How do they free up $10 million?
-trade 2 guys making $3 million, and 8 guys making $500k
-trade 3 guys making $2 million, and 8 guys making $500k
-trade 6 guys making $1 million, and 8 guys making $500k
-...etc. And given the premise that those middle-range players will be making less and the theory that the top-level guys will be making more, the logistics would become even more unworkable.
I mean, I don't know how things work in the NBA, although I've heard that there are loopholes in the salary cap that might facilitate the movement of star players. But even if there weren't, the roster sizes play a role.
Tom_Benjamin said:
I don't think Smith would though. He's exactly the kind of guy who would take the big pay cut.
The guys at the bottom don't make enough to save the owners real money with cuts. The top guys will get more with earlier free agency. The guys in the middle to upper middle class will get tagged in my view.
Tom
In my view, the first guys who will feel the effects are rookies, because even the NHLPA is willing to lower the rookie cap. They'll make less, and they'll make less on their following contracts as well.
The guys who will really feel the effect, in my view, are (as I guess you put it) the "upper middle class". I think the most punishing effect will be on the guy who reaches his first UFA contract, looks around, and wonders why nobody is offering him $4 million a season. Todd Marchant wouldn't get a 6 year, $19 million offer. Darius Kasparaitis won't get $4 million a season or whatever it is he got when he hit the open market. I think signing this contract indicates that Jason Smith realizes that those contracts are just not going to happen under the next CBA. I'd argue that he's already accepted his 30% pay cut, because I think that under the old CBA he'd have just filed for arbitration to make it to age 31, hit the open market, and some GM from out east would have offered him $3.5 million or more.
I'm sure the Oilers put some thought into what Smith might be able to earn under a new CBA, and decided they were comfortable making the offer. They were satisfied with paying him $2.3 million of a $31 million payroll last season, and paying him $2.6 million of a $31 million payroll going forward shouldn't be an issue.