I think the NHL has long term problems...

[sh724]

Regarding the the tax rate question, marginal rates in the top income bracket in Ontario and Quebec are 53% and 54% annually (federal and provincial combined)

That being said I think the tax rate issue is heavily overplayed as good accountants help them get around a large portion of this.

I think the actual difference after all the shenanigans comes down to be closer to a 10-15% difference which definitely matters isn't as wildly impactful as some people make it out to be. Everyone's city has other advantages sell those as well.

If the highest in the league is 54% (I have no idea if it is) the difference from top to bottom is far lower than 40%. The highest US tax bracket, which pretty much all NHL players fall into is 37% so even in states with zero state tax the difference would be 17%. Its obviously not that simple as US tax rates are marginal. Then some cities have income taxes. Then there are the jock taxes. There is quite a bit of nuance in tax law especially for athletes. The point being no players effective tax rate is anywhere close to 40% more than any other players effective tax rate.

 

[Empoleon8771]

I'm honestly perplexed that fans make as big of an issue out of taxes as they do, because all of these are true:

1. There has been no correlation shown between success and tax rate
2. Teams with high taxes have been able to sign UFAs just as easily as teams with low taxes, and teams with low tax rates haven't been able to sign more UFAs than teams with high tax rates
3. Teams with high taxes also tend to have other benefits (such as locally raised players, nicer cities/facilities and being able to offer huge signing bonuses) that can easily be argued is a competitive advantage similar to tax rates
4. Most players have agents and accountants to figure this stuff out for them and to minimize their losses to taxes

 

[Svechhammer]

Four pages in and no one seems upset with how the league is handling the Chicago issue. I guess that must make league execs happy as hell: A team covers for a sex predator before looking the other way as he skips on over to a high school team and all the fans care about is state taxes and inconsistent officiating. I can practically hear Bettman and Wirtz exchanging high fives and giggling about how easy this story is going to be to bury.

That doesn't impact the on ice product.

But you are absolutely right, the off ice product absolutely needs a change. And its not just this, it even goes back to the reaction over the Bill Peters situation last year where there was a loud subsection of the hockey community that just wanted everyone to get over it. The league has a 'good ol boys club' aspect to it where if you aren't a good Canadian kid with good hockey roots (and we all know the implication there) then you are judged with a different lens than anyone else. And heaven forbid if you happen to be a POC or a European, you should just feel fortunate that the league even allows you to partake in this.

A lot of damage was done over the years to the culture of hockey by the likes of Don Cherry, and its going to take a lot of work to get out of it. Unfortunately, the community doesn't seem to even care that there is an issue right now.

 

[North Cole]

Can a player just start a corporation, locate it in Florida, and have their signing bonus paid out to that corporation and pay taxes on it there? I'm not sure how far the accountants go, but if people are doing stuff like that, then tax rates in different places are pretty largely irrelevant anyway. Maybe every player just gets paid out of Texas, Vegas, Florida, etc. for all we know and none of it is an issue. I don't know any sports accountants though, so I'm not sure what tricks they all use.

Of all the other things listed, reffing is a big issue. It's been a big issue since I started watching hockey. Having a different rulebook for the regular season and playoffs is stupid. Being inconsistent from game to game, week to week, season to season on how you call things is stupid. The first post lockout season that attempted to rectify this was a weird year, but if refs are consistent enough with calling everything they see, players and teams will adapt. The bottom line is, teams will get away with as much as they can wherever they can, and it usually results in lame clutch and grab hockey. If you need a nap, just put on some dead puck era hockey, it doesn't look hugely different from modern playoff hockey.

Also I love the hard cap, screw teams being able to outspend other teams, and I'm glad that bad contracts are penalized. Navigating the salary cap adds a layer of strategy to hockey that is much more intriguing than Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, and NJ spending their way to cups in the late 90's without competition. I'm a Stars fan saying this BTW. Also, non-guaranteed contracts are detrimental to players, the thing fans actually care about, and beneficial to billionaires who really, really don't need your sympathy or help.

If I can expand this topic to one more issue I have, it's 82 games. I think the reason the NFL is so brilliant on TV is that it's once a week per team, which makes it easy to watch for fans, and makes every game meaningful. I don't think the NHL could live on 17 games a year, which would be weird, but this shortened season was much more engaging because the games meant more individually than a regular season. 82 games is way too many games.

Depends, just having a company there and rerouting funds can get you going the wrong way really quickly - in theory (old info) what you're looking for is a personal services corporation. You have to be very careful to meet the requirements of actually having a PSC, because if you don't, looks like you fall into the category of personal holding company and get destroyed. PHC seems to be more along the lines of what you are talking about. I don't live in the US and this article is from 1995 so I imagine some of the tax law has changed, but this is kind of a interesting foundation. You could probably search up more recent IRS information on PSC's to see if they are still relevant, I live in Canada so the rules are a bit different - but also the players get paid in USD and live in Canada, so they can pay more tax for all I care.

Some "light" reading on the bolded:
https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1548&context=plr
(keep in mind this is old and most likely partially outdated - though I'm sure the principal still applies.)

Hedge funds are the masters at dodging tax, through both reinsurance to Bermuda (reinvestment insurance company) and interest carrying fees. Doubt players could get away with these types of shenanigans, but it's interesting.

Tax avoidance is practiced everywhere and there's usually some penalties, interest, and back taxes if you apply the code the incorrectly. It's a fine line, because if you fall into the category of Tax Evasion, you pay the same fees but then get a fine and go to jail for 10 years.

EDIT - a nice anecdote from that article to maybe get through to the people taking out their watch calculators and multiplying the marginal rate by the income:

Therefore, the athlete, his agent, his attorney, and his financial advisor should carefully consider all of the aforementioned advantages and disadvantages in determining whether to incorporate the athlete's services. Since each athlete's situation differs greatly, they should avoid generalizations when determining the utility of the personal service corporation."43 Instead, they should determine whether the benefits of forming a personal service corporation outweigh the disadvantages that-will accompany the formation of such a corporation for that particular athlete.
​

Avoid generalizations folks.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Watching the NBA and NHL playoffs side by side, there really is no comparison. Yeah, the NHL needs to tweak some things, but it’s on a pretty good trajectory.

this year, the NBA did a really bad job of rigging series/play-in games so that the teams people actually wanted to see advanced

as a fan of fair play, i applaud them (for once). as someone who dgaf about a milwaukee-suns finals, i probably won't watch until an elimination game, if at all.

 

[Captain97]

If the highest in the league is 54% (I have no idea if it is) the difference from top to bottom is far lower than 40%. The highest US tax bracket, which pretty much all NHL players fall into is 37% so even in states with zero state tax the difference would be 17%. Its obviously not that simple as US tax rates are marginal. Then some cities have income taxes. Then there are the jock taxes. There is quite a bit of nuance in tax law especially for athletes. The point being no players effective tax rate is anywhere close to 40% more than any other players effective tax rate.

No I think k after shenanigans it's closer to 10% which again is certainly noticeable but not massive. And Quebec has the highest marginal tax rate out of all the teams at 54%

 

[Captain Awesome]

Thanks for the thorough reply, but don't worry, this is America. If you try to game your taxes and you're rich, you get a slap on the wrist and a nice fruit basket. You'd have to have a really really bad accountant to get in any real trouble. The IRS only really goes after poor people, they don't have lawyers.

Having a PSC seems like an interesting idea, if you don't have urgent monthly cash needs, you can really tuck away a lot of money pre-tax in some sort of retirement fund, and it seems like a convenient way to have your manager, accountant, and whoever else you need as a contracted service on payroll to help deal with running the PSC properly. The paper you gave me said that, in theory, you'd save around 5% from the difference between a personal and corporate tax rate, but I'm sure you could do a lot better than that with a corporation if need be. I'm sure some modern-day form of this exists for all athletes, though I'm not sure how easy it would be if you're a Canadian playing on a Canadian team, that's probably a whole different thing.

 

[iamjs]

Guaranteed contracts should go away. An NHL player can sign a 8 year deal and completely mail it in if he wants to. That is impossible in the NFL, a superior league.

[[laughs in Jeff Skinner]]

 

[Canadienna]

I think there's some attainable middle ground here.

For example reducing or eliminating the cap penalty for buyouts would mitigate the long term cap structure issues you bring up, and give big market teams more leverage on their capital to improve the on-ice product.

I'd be up for that. As with introducing a "playoff cap" that's marginally higher than the regular season cap.

It does seem that the tax issue is real, but there's no way to do it fairly in my opinion as there are so many ways a city may have benefits over another. You would have a never ending list of grievances to deal with.

 

[Machinehead]

1-0 is my favorite score

 

[ItWasJustified]

Also, boo to Ron McLean for giving Bettman a pass and not evening asking him about it.

Ron McLean does what his overlords tell him to do. You should've learn that from how he treated the Don Cherry thing.

 

[EichHart]

1-0 is my favorite score

While I don't find it exciting, soccer is the most popular sport in the world and the majority of their games end 1-0 after 90 minutes of play.

 

[Machinehead]

While I don't find it exciting, soccer is the most popular sport in the world and the majority of their games end 1-0 after 90 minutes of play.

It's not about the score, it's about the play. It's hard to have a 1-0 game that's not extremely well-played.

And despite the lower number of events, the better team usually wins lower-scoring games, because they were able to break down a tight defense.

In high-scoring games, especially in the playoffs, most goals are random. They either deflect a bunch of times or the goalie just misses it.

 

[PensandCaps]

Just get rid of the Salary cap.

 

[triggrman]

Also I thought state taxes are an itemized deduction on your federal taxes. So even if you're paying more state tax you end up paying less in federal taxes.

Yes

 

[onetweasy]

Dead puck era 2.0. Most of the games were a boring slogfest.

This.

The NHL's pursuit of parity has turned the game back to a place it did not need to go.

 

[onetweasy]

Been watching since 1990, they missed just as many calls back then. The absolute only difference, is there wasn't an internet for people to go bitch about it on. Only difference. I don't like game management either, but it will remain because the alternative is to call everything by the book, and 10+ PP a period and all the stops in play would soon have you being upset about that.

I agree with the fact social media has amplified the bitch fest.....what I want to see is a rule book that can be applied consistently. Re-write some rules if need be, sit down and decide how things will be called, discuss with the players and keep open dialogue with the fans and media about what you are trying to accomplish with your rules, why things were called a certain way etc.

This black box, ivory tower approach that the NHL currently operates under is for a past generation.

 

[Realm]

They’re missing calls at a much higher rate. Year to year even. It’s alarming.

Whatever excuse you can use (game is “too fast”) something needs to be done to improve in that area. It’s not just people suddenly starting to complain about it out of boredom. It’s legitimate concerns

EVERY sport complains about officials. Its worse now because of HD TV, slow motion, social media. Its talked about everywhere during the games. In 1987 where did people go complain about officials? The day after at the water cooler, half the calls people were mad about at the time they forgot about after the game went on. Now its instant commentary all over the place.

 

[NHL Review]

EVERY sport complains about officials. Its worse now because of HD TV, slow motion, social media. Its talked about everywhere during the games. In 1987 where did people go complain about officials? The day after at the water cooler, half the calls people were mad about at the time they forgot about after the game went on. Now its instant commentary all over the place.

Yes and what I said is I’m talking about modern times. Year to year, the officiating is getting worse and more people are criticizing it. Same with DoPS.

Also the issues with officiating in other sports are very minor compared to the NHL and/or easily fixable. They also have much better broadcast and replay systems in place. League doesn’t feel like they need to upgrade in that area, for some reason, so we get a lot of differing viewpoints on bad hits or penalties.

 

[Pia8988]

Another Canada fan claiming unfair. A post full of bullshit and proven wrong time and time again. Keep all advantages I have, but get rid of the ones others have. That's what they all read like.

 

[habsrule4eva3089]

The overall quality of Team Hockey is garbage in the nhl.

Too many garbage players, too many garbage teams in useless american cities and coaching needs more European influence to find beauty of the game. There's only literally 8 or 9 players that are elite on the top end teams the rest are just replacement calibre nonsense who people pay to watch skate in straight lines.

The only time we see quality squads is at the Olympics and the american elite at the nhl obviously don't want that since their clients in the US will question why the Hockey is garbage in their local arenas.

That's the only time we can truly judge what Hockey truly is and how it is evolving from a team basis with the best rosters. How artistic and what a true Hockey team with the best players can look like.

Other sports like basketball and european football have these teams in their club leagues so it's attractive to watch when such talents merge together to create a masterpiece. But Hockey is too small a sport played by too few nations to have one supreme league with over 30 teams.

In a perfect world 21 teams, elite rosters and unbelievable quality of Hockey. Right now for 20 minutes a game you're watching grown men hump each other in the corner of an arena.

 

[Estlin]

NFL and NBA have jumped the shark. Their commissioners and ownership have chased every buck and cent by whoring out their product. Paper tigers.

Ads splattered not only along the boards and on the ice, but also on helmets and, soon, uniforms, is not indicative of the NHL whoring out its product to earn $$$?

 

[Louie the Blue]

Hold the line solider.

NFL and NBA have jumped the shark. Their commissioners and ownership have chased every buck and cent by whoring out their product. Paper tigers.

TVs may be on their games, but all their fans are on their phones.

Last time I checked the NHL is the only major 4 sports league to sell the naming rights to their divisions.

 

[Sidney the Kidney]

1. Salary Cap. I personally believe it has some good points, but their needs to be a Luxury Tax or something for teams wanting to go for it and trying to win it all. Big markets are why this league stays afloat, they need the option to spend more.
2. Salary Cap. The tax advantage that multiple have over other higher taxed states or provinces have. To ignore this math is simply unfair. The same contract can be worth 40% more on some teams - yet ALL teams have the same amount to spend. It's utterly ridiculous.

You seem to want it both ways. You think it's "unfair" that teams in low or no tax states have an unfair advantage over other teams and that should be addressed, but also think that big market (or rich) teams should be allowed to spend more.

So are you looking for actual fairness for all teams, or just for your own team (based on username I'm assuming Leafs)?

 

[Tom Polakis]

Contrary the NHL has never been better. New TV deal, cap likely going to keep increasing once the world is back to a degree of normalcy. Southern Markets doing well...

[Good summary]

...Most of this, like all these threads, is much ado about nothing. Incessant complaining without even understanding how to actually fix any of these "issues", most of which aren't issues for the parties that have a real stake in them. That doesn't include fans by the way, sorry.

Yep, see the plot I posted on Page 2. Regardless of all these alleged long-term problems that need to be fixed, league revenue has been soaring for the past 15 years. Fans are creating that revenue; the NHL is doing fine, despite all the complaining on this board.