Huge News!!! Nhlpa Offers Cap

[SENSfreak_03]

this is great. the fact that they are speaking the same language now, there in the same universe. all that needs to be done now is the number. i dont see how they can come this far and let this fall apart. there in the same universe. it can be done.

i like a 42 mil hard cap with a franchise player. i dont know if the pa would accept that. i think they should, but we'll see. i expect this will end somewhere between 43-47 mil.

 

[krandor]

If the NHLPA is agreeing to a cap there is room to negotiate now. Yes there is still a gap in numbers, but that can be worked out and is where give-and-take on all the other issues (free agency, arbitration, qualifying offers) can come into play. Owners can offer a lower cap i order to conceded something like arbitration or vice-versa for the players.

If a cap is on a table, a deal should be possible. If the NHL can't make a deal after the NHLPA offers a cap, then I am completely done with the owners and I've been supporting them the whole time. They got the NHLPA to move - no need to go for the juggular - get a deal done.

 

[Cropduster]

The best thing going for us now is that yes they are speaking the same language and in 24 hours this headache will get 20x bigger should nothing be done. The NHL loses, the NHLPA loses even harder. This might be last minute but its the closest we have been in this mess since the beginning of this nightmare.

God I hate being so optimistic-we could all get slammed again with bad news...

 

[krandor]

If they can't get a deal done now, I'm going to stick with the ECHL team that is closer to where I live then the NHL anyway and just forget about the NHL.

 

[Ogie Ogilthorpe]

If the NHLPA is agreeing to a cap there is room to negotiate now. Yes there is still a gap in numbers, but that can be worked out and is where give-and-take on all the other issues (free agency, arbitration, qualifying offers) can come into play. Owners can offer a lower cap i order to conceded something like arbitration or vice-versa for the players.

If a cap is on a table, a deal should be possible. If the NHL can't make a deal after the NHLPA offers a cap, then I am completely done with the owners and I've been supporting them the whole time. They got the NHLPA to move - no need to go for the juggular - get a deal done.

I agree with you 100 percent... I would hate to see the season end over a 12 million dollar difference in the Cap... The players made a huge concession (in terms of where they stood) now its time for the Owners to make a bit of a concession and come up between 4 and 6 million on their cap number... Which I see happening... the players come in High, the ownes come in Low, they meet somewhere in the middle.. LOL kinda like dealing with a player on his new contract...

 

[mooseOAK*]

I agree with you 100 percent... I would hate to see the season end over a 12 million dollar difference in the Cap... The players made a huge concession (in terms of where they stood) now its time for the Owners to make a bit of a concession and come up between 4 and 6 million on their cap number... Which I see happening... the players come in High, the ownes come in Low, they meet somewhere in the middle.. LOL kinda like dealing with a player on his new contract...

It is a difference of $12 MILLION DOLLARS!!! Per team!

The players salary cap offer was just another ** to the league trying to get them to accept another bad deal at the last second.

 

[red devil]

Details of the Proposals
NHLPA
A cap of $52 million but with provisions for teams to spend as much as 10 per cent more than that on three occasions in a six-year period, with a luxury tax incorporated. The luxury tax rates would be 25 per cent on $40-44 million; 50 per cent on $44-48 million; 75 per cent on $48-52 million and 150 per cent on $52-$57.2 million.

NHL
- A hard cap of $40 million, with a 50 per cent luxury tax on $34-40 million.

http://www.tsn.ca/news_story.asp?ID=115014&hubName=main

 

[tantalum]

not sure if this was linked before but TSN has more details on what was actually offered.

While the cap was $52 mil there was a provision that teams may exceed that by 10% 3 times in 6 years. That make it significantly different from a simple $52 mi hard cap.

Tax rate: The luxury tax rates would be 25 per cent on $40-44 million; 50 per cent on $44-48 million; 75 per cent on $48-52 million and 150 per cent on $52-$57.2 million.

Still low tax rates and high thresholds IMO.

On the owners side they countered with a $40 mil hard cap and a 50% tax from 34-40 mil.

They are still MILES apart.
TSN

 

[crossxcheck]

not sure if this was linked before but TSN has more details on what was actually offered.

While the cap was $52 mil there was a provision that teams may exceed that by 10% 3 times in 6 years. That make it significantly different from a simple $52 mi hard cap.

Tax rate: The luxury tax rates would be 25 per cent on $40-44 million; 50 per cent on $44-48 million; 75 per cent on $48-52 million and 150 per cent on $52-$57.2 million.

Still low tax rates and high thresholds IMO.

edit: maybe I'm misreading this...is the 150% luxury tax only for those teams that go over the $52m 3 times in six years??? If so, this is slightly better assuming the tax money is redistributed to them bottom of the league.
On the owners side they countered with a $40 mil hard cap and a 50% tax from 34-40 mil.

They are still MILES apart.
TSN

I agree. The difference in these two offers is greater than I originally anticipated. One's a hard cap and ones a soft cap. another thing that really strikes me as turning away the NHL is saying that teams can spend up to 10% over $52m 3 times in six years without penalty. They won't go for that. I'm still slightly optimistic, but not as much as I was when I first read tsn.ca this morning.

EDIT: I think I misunderstood this. the 150% tax is for teams who exceed the $52m limit 3 times in 6 years. As long as all tax money collected is redistributed to the bottom of the league, I don't see a problem with that. I do, however, think a $52m cap is a tad too high.

 

[Biggest Canuck Fan]

I think you might want to re-check those numbers.

lets see... 7,000,000 divided by 30 teams if all the teams stay in the figure given...

VOILA!!!

Each team would only have 233,333 less to spend. So I was off by $3,333.33

Point is at 45 million a season, the PA should be very happy with that as it isn't to far off their proposal.

 

[Rageinthecage]

Five months of "negotiating" to get from philosophical differences to financial differences? When a transcription is printed of this whole debacle after completion, won't it look like a bunch of 12 year olds bickering? Cap! No cap! Cap! No cap!.....7 hours later....Cap! No cap! Hold on, my throat is getting sore, let's go home. Same time tomorrow? In the meantime, at least two-thirds of a season's revenue and payroll have been p*ssed away.

Both Bettman and Goodenow deserve to lose their jobs over this mess. Goodenow for losing a year of player salary before caving in to the inevitable position he finds himself in now. Bettman for being most likely the worst leader in professional sports history.

Bob McKenzie on Mojo radio this morning still didn't sound too optimistic re: both sides bridging the gap. If you also look at the new story on TSN (appears the NHLPA's $52 proposal is just a soft cap), neither side seems to willing to move off their positions. But of course that is just the public spin at present....

Best quote of the day (McKenzie taking Esche's comment from a few months ago into current context):

"$100 million cap - no way

$200 million cap - no, we're never going to accept a cap...

$52 million cap - okay, but let's wait a few months"

 

[Biggest Canuck Fan]

your numbers are faulty.

7m per team is 7m per team. ;-)

dr

Not really... The PA propsed 52. Isee what your saying but my logic is this...

Each team has 45 right? Now that is 7 less. It isn't 30 x 7 cause we know all 30 teams won't hit 45. So really only 10 of 30 will hit the 45 cause there are some stupid ignorant owners out there.

Yeah the math was wrong... but I hope the point was not.

And again.. OWNERS YOU WON!!! GET THE SEASON STARTED!!!

 

[CGG]

not sure if this was linked before but TSN has more details on what was actually offered.

While the cap was $52 mil there was a provision that teams may exceed that by 10% 3 times in 6 years. That make it significantly different from a simple $52 mi hard cap.

Tax rate: The luxury tax rates would be 25 per cent on $40-44 million; 50 per cent on $44-48 million; 75 per cent on $48-52 million and 150 per cent on $52-$57.2 million.

Still low tax rates and high thresholds IMO.

On the owners side they countered with a $40 mil hard cap and a 50% tax from 34-40 mil.

They are still MILES apart.
TSN

What happened to the good old days when the league was offering $32M - $42M and no luxury tax? Now they lower both their numbers and add a 50% tax from 34 - 40 mil? Aren't they going backwards?

Still a big gap, but one that absolutely has to be bridged in the next 24 hours. The PA proposal has a minimum of $25 M (someone correct me if I'm wrong) so for their range (25 - 52) to be brought closer to the league's (30 - 40) we need more revenue sharing. If the league really and inexplicably doesn't want more revenue sharing, then they have to go closer to the PA's numbers. I'd say 52M as an absolute maximum, so the soft cap at $48M that can only be exceeded 3 out of 6 years, with a min of $28M and increase the luxury tax rates between 40 and 48.

 

[Captain Lou]

What happened to the good old days when the league was offering $32M - $42M and no luxury tax? Now they lower both their numbers and add a 50% tax from 34 - 40 mil? Aren't they going backwards?

No linkage in this offer. Owners want to know what their payrolls will be, players want to know how much they can make. Seems fair. Cost certainty for both sides.

Linkage was the red herring. It got the players to agree to a cap in principle.

Now let's get rid of that salary floor, it is a stupid idea anyway. Also, the big markets should be sharing revenue with the small ones. We all understand that a league like this is a quasi-socialist society anyway (not pure capitalism, teams need each other, etc.), so a cap system of some kind, along with meaningful revenue sharing to help out the REALLY bad-off franchises is in order.

 

[Motown Beatdown]

No linkage in this offer. Owners want to know what their payrolls will be, players want to know how much they can make. Seems fair. Cost certainty for both sides.

Linkage was the red herring. It got the players to agree to a cap in principle.

Now let's get rid of that salary floor, it is a stupid idea anyway. Also, the big markets should be sharing revenue with the small ones. We all understand that a league like this is a quasi-socialist society anyway (not pure capitalism, teams need each other, etc.), so a cap system of some kind, along with meaningful revenue sharing to help out the REALLY bad-off franchises is in order.

You need a salary floor for revenue sharing. But it should be a "soft floor" Teams can be below that payroll but wont receive any proceeds from the luxury tax.

 

[Captain Lou]

You need a salary floor for revenue sharing. But it should be a "soft floor" Teams can be below that payroll but wont receive any proceeds from the luxury tax.

I diasgree, the only reason for a floor was so players could be guaranteed a certain amount of revenue. It is widely acknowledged that many teams are in deep financial trouble, therefore, revenue sharing is needed to help keep these teams salient, and to allow these teams to keep more of their players.

Unless, of course, these teams aren't in as much trouble as reported...

 

[TheBudsForever]

Split The Difference and Implement Luxury Tax With Real Teeth - DONE!

Salary cap of $46 million.

Dollar for dollar luxury tax penalty for teams that go over the cap.
Grandfather clause to the effect that cap only applies to 50% of the annual salary of any long term big dollar contracts that pre-date the new CBA, after allowing for 24% rollback on existing salaries. Ie. Sundin's $9 million dollar contract reduced to $6.84 million, half of which (=$3.42 million) is to be used for salary cap calculations going forward.

Alternatively, each NHL club is entitled to designate one franchise player and whatever is paid to this person annually is not used in calculation of the cap figure. That should make the big dollar NHL clubs happy and will also see to it that at least 10 to 15 of NHL's greatest player make alot of money at the same time. Bottom line, in this scenario, if you want to make alot of money as a star player, you better strive to put max effort in to get rewarded with dollars.

A deal is no very doable even if it takes another week. Just extend the back end of the schedule an extra week or so and allow for a 30 game season.

As I recall, at the time of the last strike, we played an extra 2 months past normal season end re playoffs.

 

[TheBudsForever]

No linkage in this offer. Owners want to know what their payrolls will be, players want to know how much they can make. Seems fair. Cost certainty for both sides.

Linkage was the red herring. It got the players to agree to a cap in principle.

Now let's get rid of that salary floor, it is a stupid idea anyway. Also, the big markets should be sharing revenue with the small ones. We all understand that a league like this is a quasi-socialist society anyway (not pure capitalism, teams need each other, etc.), so a cap system of some kind, along with meaningful revenue sharing to help out the REALLY bad-off franchises is in order.

No disrespect intended, but if need be, let the weakest 6 teams in the NHL fold. Talent level for the remaining 24 teams will be much better and that will benefit the game. Also, I really really doubt that you will ever convince teams like Toronto, New York, Philly, etc to contribute part of their revenue to save some smaller market teams. From their perspective, it really doesn't matter whether the NHL is a 20 team league or a 30 team league .... any which way you cut it, they'll still be bringing their fans in and the accompanying dollars.

 

[mooseOAK*]

No disrespect intended, but if need be, let the weakest 6 teams in the NHL fold. Talent level for the remaining 24 teams will be much better and that will benefit the game. Also, I really really doubt that you will ever convince teams like Toronto, New York, Philly, etc to contribute part of their revenue to save some smaller market teams. From their perspective, it really doesn't matter whether the NHL is a 20 team league or a 30 team league .... any which way you cut it, they'll still be bringing their fans in and the accompanying dollars.

I don't think that Toronto, New York, Philly, etc want to foot their share of the bill to buy out those franchises either.

Whether it is 24 or 30 teams, referees will still be letting interference go, coaches will still be using the trap, and goaltenders equipment will still be abnormally large and protecting nothing but air in a lot of spots. Fix those things, then see what happens first.

 

[Wetcoaster]

This isn't the point of what we're discussing here, but there are public sources who refute your postion that this is quite enough. Forbes methodology involves guessing from the outside, without any access to the books-even the NHL says that they're wrong. There is not enough info out there.

What conflicting claims? The PA basically says that they don't know/care what the NHL's financial position is. They noted that Forbes contradicts the NHL's position, which was stupid of them to do, but there it is. The NHL is the one who have claimed massive losses, the PA says they don't know and don't care. You might not like the PA's position, but there's more evidence to back it up.

My position on Forbes is that it was at best a conservative look at the finances - and that the losses were at least that low ($96 Million - that is only a little over $3 million per tem) and probably lower. Forbes compared the team URO's to documents they were able to get at publicly (SEC filings for example by parent companies, etc.) to come up with their figures.

In the case of the Vancouver Canucks the best that Forbes could confirm was a profit of $.3 million for 2003-03 while the Canucks announced a profit of 20 million and for 2003-04 Forbes credited the Canucks with $1.7 million profit. Burke before leaving the Canucks was quoted assaying the team would realize profits in excess of $25 million for the past season and today the Vancouver Sun stated the Canucks made about $30 million for the past season.

One of the problems with the Levitt Report was that it failed to provide individual team breakdowns so it was difficult to figure out what was actually going on. We do know that the Flyers' Ed Snider claimed that the team was one of the ones showing a loss in the Levitt report but according to the Flyers President, Ron Ryan, the Flyers made a profit. Forbes credited the Flyers with a $3.5 million profit.

Levitt pegged player costs ate up 75% of revenues but if you look at his definitions they were quite bizarre. According to Forbes the NHL player salaries to revenues were about 60% which was in line with the other major sports.

If I had to choose between Forbes and Levitt I would go with Forbes. YMMV.