Imposed parity?

[EJsens1]

Name those teams that your example applies to. It sure doesn't apply to Ottawa, one of the smallest markets in the league.

I wouldn't agree that Ottawa hasn't been hit by it. We did lose Yashin for basically financial reasons. Okay, sure he was a headcase over the top and we ended up making out like bandits with the trade, but we simply couldn't afford him. Two of Ottawa's biggest reasons why they have kept their payroll down lower while keeping many of the players is because a) we are still very young and; b) our playoff failures have kept players from demanding higher salaries because of a lack of success. If we had won the Cup this year, with all the RFA we had, it would have been a rough summer on Melnyk's account and Ottawa's budget. But we would have won the CUP....

 

[MarkZackKarl]

What the hell are you talking about? How was Yashin's 3.6 million deemed to be too expensive, when we signed Alfredsson, Redden and Bonk to equal or more expensive deals.

Any logical person can see that Ottawa has had and would not have had any troulbe keeping our players.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

If they don't draw enough to pay for a rebuilding team year after year, get rid of the team. Tom

That's an unbelievably arrogant statement. As a fan of the now-deceased Montreal Expos, I take great offense to the above statement. Walk a mile in the shoes of a fan of a team on the verge of extinction, before making general statements like above.

Losing a team you grew up loving is a very painful experience. And I don't care how many years the likes of Nashville, Atlanta or Columbus have been around, the fact remains that there are people out there that have already given their heart and soul to these franchises.

"Just getting rid" of teams just sweeps the problem under a rug, it doesn't solve the problem. All it does is eliminate a fan base, which royally SUCKS--speaking from personal experience.

 

[dawgbone]

What the hell are you talking about? How was Yashin's 3.6 million deemed to be too expensive, when we signed Alfredsson, Redden and Bonk to equal or more expensive deals.

Any logical person can see that Ottawa has had and would not have had any troulbe keeping our players.

Considering he wanted much more than $3.6 million, I'd say he priced himself out of Ottawa.

The certainly did well with the return they got, but that's really another story.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

Don't mean to interject, but I don't think anyone would complain about their team fading away into the sunset after making a good, hard run at Glory. What I think there is a fear of is that the ability to build a team to win for the long term will be devalued and, in its place, will be the implementation of systems with easy to replace cogs that are shifted and replaced annually.

Instead of building a team up through solid drafts and trades/waivers/etc. (such as how the wings picked up Draper and Maltby), we'll see teams actually built more through free agency as a greater number of mid-lower end players continually hit the market. And with greater roster turnover, teams will work to create a "team system" that is easy to learn and implement, and this system will most likely be defensive (to hit back on the original intent of this thread).

As I said before, teams need to be able to retain their core. They should be rewarded for building a team right, and forcing them to gut part of their club because they developed too good of a team isn't exactly fair either. Give teams a generous cap break for retaining their own players (say, players who have played with them for 5+ seasons) and perhaps some form of penalty for splurging on UFA while having a certain amount already tied up in the team, and I think it would be a better system than a simple hard cap.

I don't think a cap would necessarily bring about a system where there is less "building-from-within". In fact, I'd argue that if you use the cap properly you'll build from within even more. When a Kris Draper becomes too expensive, because he's better probably than fourth-line status but has been in that role in Motown, then the Wings can slide Johan Franzen into his role. Kirk Maltby gone? Bring in Nathan Robinson or other.

The thing is, the Red Wings have had opportunities to replace vets with players from within in the past, but have often chosen to replace veterans with veterans--Zetterberg and Datsyuk the obvious exceptions, Kronwall likely to add to the list of exceptions soon. And that's fine. But under a cap, perhaps they may take a little closer look at what's down on the farm before deciding that Ray Whitney is absolutely essential to their roster.

I think for most teams, the first instinct for a solution to losing a player to FA would be to find the replacement from within (unless, of course, there's cap space and it's a good year for FAs, or you're looking for a specific type of player who happens to be available, etc.).

For the Wings, perhaps they have to change the way they "build" their roster. Do a little tweaking. It's not going to change their position in the standings, unless they A) continue to trade away first-round draft picks for aging players that contribute little or B) stop finding those late-round gems that they've become synonymous for.

Lastly, Mike Ilitch's reputation will remain intact, cap or no cap. Players and their agents will still believe that Ilitch treats his players well, and that he "wants to win", etc. So, players will still want to play for Detroit, ahead of say Boston--where the owner will continue to garner the reputation of a cheap *******. Reputations don't change overnight, but rather over an extended period of time.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

And thus my proposal of a tenure based cap. My proposal is that anyone that has played their entire career for a team does not count against the cap, and then there is also an exception based on tenure of service. I've proposed anywhere from a 6-8 year tenure of service to get the cap exception. Then the only players who are being capped are the players signed as free agents in recent seasons as well as players who are traded for in recent seasons.

This would allow teams to spend their money as they wish on their homegrown talent, without worrying about cap limits, and it would prevent teams from overspending in the free agent market or making reverse salary dump trades to their advantage.

When it all comes down to it, no matter what cap or tax you come up with, it has to have a threshold, and that's what is really to debate. If you set up the rules, you have to determine the threshold you want to enforce, no matter what set of rules you use. So that I consider up to debate.

The problem with this system is that even a homegrown big-spending club can have negative ramifications with the rest of the league. As long as there's things like salary arbitration around, even your proposal wouldn't solve the main problem--which is the artificial escalation of salaries and the payroll discrepancies of teams within the same league.

Jose Theodore (I know I keep going back to that contract, but it was a significant point in the whole lockout war, IMHO) is a homegrown player, but his salary would affect homegrown players all over the NHL. Theodore may or may not be worth what he's making in the Montreal market, but salary arbitration doesn't take intangibles into account.

Also, there would have to be a clear-cut definition of what a homegrown talent is. Is a homegrown talent someone simply drafted by the team he's playing for? Is Christoph Brandner more of a homegrown talent than Jarome Iginla? One was drafted by the Wild when he was like 28 years old, after having spent his formative years in Europe. Iginla has grown up in the Flames system, but was drafted by Dallas and traded at age 19. Some parameters would have to be placed, and even then it could get rather complicated.

Just one man's opinion.

 

[YellHockey*]

It applies to every team except the big markets.

So is Ottawa a big market now?

 

[Winger98]

And thus my proposal of a tenure based cap. My proposal is that anyone that has played their entire career for a team does not count against the cap, and then there is also an exception based on tenure of service. I've proposed anywhere from a 6-8 year tenure of service to get the cap exception. Then the only players who are being capped are the players signed as free agents in recent seasons as well as players who are traded for in recent seasons.

This would allow teams to spend their money as they wish on their homegrown talent, without worrying about cap limits, and it would prevent teams from overspending in the free agent market or making reverse salary dump trades to their advantage.

When it all comes down to it, no matter what cap or tax you come up with, it has to have a threshold, and that's what is really to debate. If you set up the rules, you have to determine the threshold you want to enforce, no matter what set of rules you use. So that I consider up to debate.

I remember your proposal and I thought it was inspired. It's also exactly what the NHL/NHLPA should be looking at, but is something I have seen neither side mention in the past three years.

When mentioning a threshold, though, I think a low end threshold also needs to be debated. Using last season's salary numbers, if every team over $45 million in total payroll was brought down to $45 million, and all of the other teams remained the same, the player expenditures for the league would be very close to what the NHL claims to want to set the percentage at through the CBA and a cap in the low-30s. And it's because some teams will still be spending $20 million a season.

I think this is something that frightens the players about a cap. Regardless of how low the cap is set, there will be teams who will be spending less. So while a few teams will make it to the $30 million level, I'm willing to bet a fair share will also hover around $20-25, if not less, and individual salaries will stand a good chance at dipping below the $1.3 million level that I think the NHL has mentioned (going by memory, so I could be off).

Now I don't personally think a team should be forced to spend more money than they need to ice their team. But at the same time if a floor isn't set, especially with a very low ceiling in place, I think we'd see a number of teams basically abuse it and push salaries into the ground. A lot of these problems could be fixed a bit with solutions like yours, but I have yet to see either side be that creative or flexible.

 

[EJsens1]

What the hell are you talking about? How was Yashin's 3.6 million deemed to be too expensive, when we signed Alfredsson, Redden and Bonk to equal or more expensive deals.

Any logical person can see that Ottawa has had and would not have had any troulbe keeping our players.

You really believe that Yashin was going to settle for the amount of money that players like Redden, Bonk and Alfredsson got after Yashin was traded??? None of those deals were struck under the Bryden ownership except for Bonk, who was awarded an arbitration amount that was such an overpayment IMO. Ottawa didn't have the luxury to let Bonk go at that time because Spezza was not ready for the NHL everyday while White and Fisher weren't the answers as your 1 or 2 guy so to speak.
Yashin was looking for money in the 8-10 million range and got it from the Isles. Ottawa was never going to pay that amount ever to him because they couldn't afford to pay that much money.

 

[SENSible1*]

You really believe that Yashin was going to settle for the amount of money that players like Redden, Bonk and Alfredsson got after Yashin was traded??? None of those deals were struck under the Bryden ownership except for Bonk, who was awarded an arbitration amount that was such an overpayment IMO. Ottawa didn't have the luxury to let Bonk go at that time because Spezza was not ready for the NHL everyday while White and Fisher weren't the answers as your 1 or 2 guy so to speak.
Yashin was looking for money in the 8-10 million range and got it from the Isles. Ottawa was never going to pay that amount ever to him because they couldn't afford to pay that much money.

Bryden would have found the cash to sign Yashin for 8+ M per season. He'd simply would have picked a few more bills off his money tree.

Just leave SSF in his "logical" fantasy world.

 

[gary69]

?
Initially I agree that with somekind of link between salary and revenue there may be a fair amount of movement... but after that, I don't really see it. I doubt many players are going to book to another city for what may be a rather small increase in salary. NO team is going to suddenly offer a player five plus million after a single season of good play. No, the guys that will be earning the bigger $'s will have proven they can do it for a number of years. It would be way to risky for a GM to throw that kind of cash (the way they can now), on players that may or may not workout.

I'm not saying there won't be a change in the league, but the fact is there needs to be some kind of change, and saying this or the other thing will definitely happen is patently absurd.

With a cap system, I doubt any team, GM or coach would be foolish enough to waste any money for rank & file players for multi-year contracts with anywhere near the 1 million mark, since there would be plenty of those kind of guys available every year, not to mention new, younger (and better? cheaper?) players. You ink the few marquee players you can get for the majority of your payroll, and shuffle the supporting cast around every year.

No point keeping those failures around, instead a team who did poorly can free cap room by ditching undeperformers every year (even more easily and cheaply if buyouts are lowered) and try to lure away valuable asset from a competitor if they don't have cap room or at least force their hand to pay more for their top player, thus limiting their options. And this would happen every year, so lower tier players would seem to suffer financially.

But apparently Bettman and his cohorts have realised this too (and realizing that thus they would never be able to persuade the lower paid players to accept the cap), and now they are harboring the idea, that teams would be forced to have a payroll structure, where only a limited amount (%) of salaries would be allowed to be paid for the top earners.

As for the subject of the thread, in a league were the already too widely spread top talent would be dilluted even more amongst the teams, sure it would make the league more competitive, with more mediocre teams. If already by today's standards a team can be considered "great" if it has 2 good scoring lines, when those teams are broken down because of cap, all it means it that the talent of the great players is more and more wasted with poor team mates, like Lemieux or Gretzky with their early years linemates.

Since the systems (read trap) are more important today, referees let go with too much hooking & obstruction, huge goalie equipment, it's not unreasonable to expect that under the cap system every team will have 1-2 players, some maybe 3, within points for the scoring title (alltogether dozens of players within few points), and all the teams would be within 4 or 5 wins away from each other.

Sure it would appear to be competitive, but is this really what the fans want, just that even the most incompetent GM and owner would make money or at least break even, and that the big-market owners would cash in hugely. Instead of few players maybe being overpaid under the old CBA with the owners approval.

Howabout with higher standard of play, concentrating that talent on fewer teams?

 

[gary69]

Some teams might not have 6-7 great players on their team, but instead 4-5, which would make it more competitive for the teams that only had 1-2 great players on their team and now benefit from have 3-4 great players.

If you are a fan of Detroit, Colorado, or another big market team, you might not like the sound of it because that means you will see one of your skilled players on the other side in due time. If you are a fan of the sport, you realize it's necessary to improve the game for the future.

However, I don't support a hard salary cap, but that's been well documented on these boards what I do support.

I don't think many people argue that it wouldn't be more competitive, but how does spreading the talent even more thinly produce any better hockey, at least not in the next decade or so? When the teams that have maybe 2 good lines (which in these days some/most people consider to be great) now, have to break those teams, so there would no longer be teams of even that standard?

Isn't the measuring scale thus significantly altered for the worse? One could argue that the level of today's teams is reached and even surpassed as years go by and players improve, but this raises the counter-question, what if the great team of today was allowed to stay unaltered and develop, would it lead to a better absolute top level team? Like if Edmonton of the 80's would have been prevented from happenning, probably the effects that it had would have only happened later, but isn't that just the problem, holding the progress of the game back and the level you can reach any given time?

 

[gary69]

I don't see this. Caps don't cause teams to get rid of good young talent, or well paid stars.

Caps cause teams to get rid of *overpaid vets*. The guys who no longer provide the results compared to the salary you're paying them. The guys you look at and say "Ok, I'm paying this joker 6 million a year, when I could be paying a kid who's 90% as good only 10% of the salary."

Every time someone posts one of those "this is why I hate caps" links to the NFL, almost invariably the players that were released (causing the consternation) never played again in the league, or for a year or two at most.

Basically, a cap speeds up the "youth replacement" cycle.

You are most likely right that older veterans would probably get ditched more often under the cap, but try to ask yourself also, which players would get multi-year contracts anyway?

And if the buyout clauses are notably lower than now, don't you think the failures of lower-end (maybe even everyone else than top 5-6 players per team) would be less tolerated, and they would be moving around every year with much worse contracts than now. I can easily imagine a constant and large-scale player movement in the capped league, exempt maybe the few star players.

 

[gary69]

Actually, the NFl is packed full of 8-8 teams. Between 1983 and 92, the number of teams at or within a game of .500 was exactly equal to the number of teams with more than 9 wins or less than 7. Between 1994 and 2003 38% of NFL teams finished 7-9, 8-8, or 9-7. Thats a five percent increase since the cap was put in. It might not sound like a lot, but it really is. In each season between 83 and 92, an average of 9 teams finished at or near .500. Sine, its an average of 12. Look at the number of good to very good seasons any team had before the cap and look at them now. There's not one team that has been able to sustain over a long period of time.

Yes there are good teams in the NFL. There are two problems though: For the most part, the good teams change every year becuase they can't sustain themselves and the good teams now are nowhere near as good as the good teams of past eras. In 100 years, people are going to look at a list of SuperBowl champs and think that the 2002 Bucs were as good as the 1982 49'ers. I don't want that to happen to the Stanley Cup.

Like I said, if you what you want is for every team to maybe have a 2-3 year window to win and then they're done for another 10 years, fine. Thats your opinion, and if you think thats best, then great. I look at all the great teams that took a long time to build and think that if they had to deal with a cap, they never would've had the chance to be great.

It's funny how these arguments about cap not causing mediocrity come around about once a week in a new thread, and same arguments have to be tossed around every time. I'm happy that you bother every time to explain you view every time (because I don't, even though I agree with you).

I'm yet to see any people to present any believable argument that this dragging down wouldn't happen, when NFL is really the only even remotely similar example a person could use, and what's happened there, is for all to find out.

It's really hard to understand that just because of one's own currently (or even if permanently) poor's team's perfomance, some fans are ready to drag down the level of the better teams, and thus deny all the fans the chance of seeing the best hockey. I have always thought that most fans would agree, that if your own team can't win the whole thing, then at least it is better to see a great team to win it all, than some just barely over the average team with a wins column a tiny bit over .500 to win it?

 

[gary69]

You can't buy enough assets to win as long as players are restricted until age 31.

Tom

The only good thing I can see coming out of the hard cap, is that the UFA age will more than likely come down significantly. If the cap were to be instituted, maybe somehow lower UFA age would still ensure that great teams could be assembled.

 

[PecaFan]

I can easily imagine a constant and large-scale player movement in the capped league, exempt maybe the few star players.

I don't think that it would be much different than it is now. We already have a pretty high degree of player movement. Where's Hull? Nedved? Recchi? We have the latest trade deadline in sports, so that also fosters lots of player movement.

Players say they want a "free market" system, which by definition means high player movement. Intuitively, that means a cap would be less likely to have high player movement, since owners generally favour keeping guys as long as possible.

 

[Haj]

And thus my proposal of a tenure based cap. My proposal is that anyone that has played their entire career for a team does not count against the cap, and then there is also an exception based on tenure of service. I've proposed anywhere from a 6-8 year tenure of service to get the cap exception. Then the only players who are being capped are the players signed as free agents in recent seasons as well as players who are traded for in recent seasons.

This would allow teams to spend their money as they wish on their homegrown talent, without worrying about cap limits, and it would prevent teams from overspending in the free agent market or making reverse salary dump trades to their advantage.

When it all comes down to it, no matter what cap or tax you come up with, it has to have a threshold, and that's what is really to debate. If you set up the rules, you have to determine the threshold you want to enforce, no matter what set of rules you use. So that I consider up to debate.

Your idea is good, but I would like to see the tenure idea coincide with the UFA age (or some other criterion), that way when a player reaches the point in his career the team that he has tenure with should concievably be able to retain him because the new contract would not count against the cap. However, there should be some limit on maximum amount that will not count against the cap. For example, a contract offer up to 6 million a year would not count against the cap, offered to a player who has tenure. But the team can offer 7 million, and 1 million would count against the cap.

 

[gary69]

THIS is what needs to change.

When there's perssure to win, owners/GMs make hasty decisions at times, which have major implications around the league. I'm not saying they are wrong for making the hasty/bad business decision, but I do emphatize. Most teams are in a no-win position as it stands with the current CBA: If you're fiscally responsible, your fans will b*tch and you may see a dropoff in attendance (your MAIN source of revenue). If you're not fiscally responsible, the media (and some fans) call you out as ignorant baffoons, and it will also cause a chain reaction of events that will harm other teams (and may come back to bite you back in the a*s down the road with other players).

This is why the system must change, and a new system must be implemented that ties revenues to salaries...or Bettman's infamous "cost certainty".

Or have you ever considered that maybe you are just too narrow-minded, maybe there are other possibilities as a solution than just hard cap, what if teams had to pay instead hard cash when players change teams (instead of some unknown future draft picks).

Without stating which system would be best, all I'm saying that there are many ways to negotiate a deal, instead of NHL's stance of my way or highway. You have to wonder what their true intentions are with their current negotiation tactic, it would seem at the moment that they're just waiting to be able to declare impasse.
Well, let's see what their next proposal is made of, whenever (next fall?) it comes out.

 

[Bring Back Bucky]

Or have you ever considered that maybe you are just too narrow-minded, maybe there are other possibilities as a solution than just hard cap, what if teams had to pay instead hard cash when players change teams (instead of some unknown future draft picks).

Without stating which system would be best, all I'm saying that there are many ways to negotiate a deal, instead of NHL's stance of my way or highway. You have to wonder what their true intentions are with their current negotiation tactic, it would seem at the moment that they're just waiting to be able to declare impasse.
Well, let's see what their next proposal is made of, whenever (next fall?) it comes out.

How can you characterize the NHL's stance as being "my way or the highway" and not the NHLPA's??? The NHL insists they must have a hard cap, NHLPA says they are not even considering it.... Yes, perhaps it is an impasse, but each side repeats the same thing; they're not budging. Color them both with the same brush if you wish, but I think it's pretty narrow-minded to see that neither side is currently offering compromise....

 

[gary69]

I don't think you can say that the owners are not fiscally responsible, because all the have to look out for is their own bottom line, while it might be smart to make moves with the health of the league in consideration, if one owner is a saint and the others are all sinners then you lose out with your good deeds.

This is where the league has failed the owners by not providing a standard for which teams compete. There are so many rules for the draft, roster size/limits, and what you can do on the ice, but up until now there haven't been many guidelines as to how much a team could spend or had to spend. I think it's just as fair to question why so many teams can get by fielding such poor hockey teams and not making the financial effort to improve themselves. If a team can't spend a certain amount of money on it's team, it's probably not in a viable enough market to sustain the team for what is required.

Now the league is paying catch up to make up for the damage that has been continually done by ownership in the league. The players and PA have only taken advantage of the system in place, which has been somewhat chaotic in structure.

Funny thing is that 10 years ago the league and owners were claiming the same thing as now, but the league is worse to show for it not being corrected then. That is why the league and owners have such a hard line stance, they can't afford to lose this battle again for another 10 years unless they want to lose their businesses.

Much like the players association, the league has more teams that can lose from the way things have been than teams who benefit to keep the status quo. That is the very same reason that you'll see the average NHL's salaried players make sure that something get's done from their side when it goes too far. The majority cannot be held down for long, but they can be subdued until they realize what is going on.

I agree with you, it's usually a problem for any league competition if the competing teams are too far apart from each other regarding resources at their disposal, but rather than try to share the "lack" of revenues amongst all of them, it would probably be more useful get rid of the some franchises. Especially if there's no "outside" money like a big TV-contract to smoothen the differences. It appears that some franchises/locations are plainly in the wrong league at the moment and not up to the standard. Maybe in the future if they get better they are able to participate, but not at the moment.

Of course it's difficult to contract NHL teams, but it's quite understandable that players are waiting to see some others take the fall or at least the blame for the over-expansion/overspending as well, even if takes a couple of years and a few franchises to go bust and some players lose their jobs, mainly through retairing.

 

[thinkwild]

That's an unbelievably arrogant statement. As a fan of the now-deceased Montreal Expos, I take great offense to the above statement.

Of course you do. You're a fan at heart like me, also a Spos fan. But you're going to have to develop a thicker skin because that is the nature of PRO sports. Like the St Louis Rams and Tenessee Titans playing the superbowl. Even under the perfect cap, teams move. It must be this way. They are businesses that will seek the best market, even moreso under a salary cap because they can profit more form it. As the NFL demonstrated. You make it sound like the system should of been fixed to accomodate Montréal. As a baseball fan, I find that an arrogant statement and take great offense to it. Perhaps not as much as Washington fans.

 

[gary69]

It's growing pains. The NHL wants to reset the clock, and they have to do so carefully as to not drive the fans away. The best way to do it is to make sure it improves the game, and that means they have to get all the rules set and tested in the AHL so they have something to progress on.

It might mean that the Detroit's, Colorado's, Toronto's, and New York's of the league have to take major hits to get the league in balance, but they were a big part of what through the league off balance as well.

Growing pains is a good argument, but it only goes so far. The big teams might be willing to take a hit for a x number a years for the league's stake, but if there's no marked improvment (say TV-contract, individual team's revenues on par with the rest of the league) to be seen for their efforts in the set timeframe, then it's time to revalue the worth of having those "poor cousins" around, and decide whether the league would be better without them.

 

[thinkwild]

Considering he wanted much more than $3.6 million, I'd say he priced himself out of Ottawa.

The certainly did well with the return they got, but that's really another story.

No way, that is exactly the story you are missing.

 

[Jag68Sid87]

All I see is people trying to tell me that the NFL system would 'drag the NHL down'--as if it can get any lower than it currently is. As if the NFL isn't already waaaay superior than the NHL. And yeah, I'm even talking about the quality of the product. In the NFL, a penalty is a penalty is a penalty. In the NFL, anything can happen on any given Sunday. It's exciting. It's what sports is all about--competition. In fact, the only thing the NHL has on the NFL is that IF RUN PROPERLY the NHL could maintain interest for more than just a weekend. It could take advantage of their 60+ more games per team to keep even more momentum during the regular season. Of course, they'd have to improve the on-ice product in order to do that.

I'm not narrow-minded. I'd take ANY system that links salaries to revenues, which to me makes all the sense in the world. The REAL world, that is. As far as I'm concerned, the NHLPA is living on Fantasy Island right now, and Mr. Rourke (aka Bob Goodenow) needs to be brought down to Tatu's level in order for something to change.

 

[thinkwild]

The thing is, the Red Wings have had opportunities to replace vets with players from within in the past, but have often chosen to replace veterans with veterans--Zetterberg and Datsyuk the obvious exceptions, Kronwall likely to add to the list of exceptions soon. And that's fine. But under a cap, perhaps they may take a little closer look at what's down on the farm before deciding that Ray Whitney is absolutely essential to their roster.

For the Wings, perhaps they have to change the way they "build" their roster. Do a little tweaking. It's not going to change their position in the standings, unless they A) continue to trade away first-round draft picks for aging players that contribute little or B) stop finding those late-round gems that they've become synonymous for.

WHy do they need a cap to do this. Is it unfair they signed Whitney for more than Montreal could afford, or Nashville? Is that a problem of some sort? Why do you want to change the way they build? If they continue buying are you afraid they will have an unfair advantage? Arent you saying that they shouldnt be signing UFAs? Why do you need a cap to change this?

The only reason spending helped them before was because they were a championship team. That could afford it. Now it helps them not as you seem to be agreeing to.