hockeytown9321 said:
A cap or no cap has nothign to do with who has a crap team. Agian I point you in the direction of the Detroit Lions. They averaged about 6 wins a year in the 10 years before the cap and the same since. They can't compete becuase they are poorly run team.
If a cap has no impact on who has a crap team, then it can't have an impact on who has a good team. The best teams find ways to make the cap work for them (New England does it now, Green Bay has been consistently successful, Denver). Thus, a poorly run team is going to stink, cap or no cap, and a well run team is going to be good, cap or no cap. That should be the objective in the first place, shouldn't it?
So its fair if a team loses a superstar they developed becuase their monetary system prevents them from doing so? Doesn't that like what everybody *****es about now? I guess i just don't understand why tose teams on top should be forced to make that decison. If they have the revenue to resign their players, they should be able to.
And quite frankly, sports are business. Franchise owners are businessmen. If they can't make enough money to sustain their team the way they want to, then they should fold it or continue to lose money. Thats how business works. Sorry.
Except, when every team is on a more equal financial playing field, there aren't teams (say, like Edmonton has been for the past decade) acting as virtual feeders for the rest of the league because, if all teams have the same financial playing field, there's less likelihood of a star leaving and heading to the same four teams in the west (along with the Leafs and Rangers in the East) that have dominated the star-acquisition market for the last decade or so.
Sports are business, but they are a business that is more successful when it doesn't put the remaining franchises out of business. Thus, the competition is limited (ie. this isn't McDonald's vs. KFC) People aren't showing up to see the Red Wings play intrasquad scrimmages every night. They need opposition.
The business is the NHL, and if the owners of the NHL decide they want to change the financial parameters of the game, they have every right to do so.
You're right. But you'll have to show me when I wrote that the NHL was on par with football's ratings. I was told in a roundabout way that the NFL's level of play must be pretty good because they have better attendance than the NHL. The numbers say different.
It's a foolish argument to take a sport that plays five times as many games and only base the success of the sport on live attendance. If live attendance is the only measure of success, baseball is king of the world because no one else is touching 162 games. The grand scale of a league's success in this day and age is television, which is why the NHL is in no position to criticize how the NFL is run.
I saw somebody describe the cap as affimative action, and they're right. Instead of figuring out ways to get the poorest temas to the level of the best, they want to take the best and drag it down to the level of the worst. If thats what you want, then great. I don't think its right or good for the game.
How would you suggest making the poorest teams closer to the best? They already have the advantage of higher draft picks. What else can be done, aside from leveling the financial playing field, to make the sport fair? If all you're looking for is the next dynasty, then the cap isn't going to do you any good, but if you want teams to go into each season with a fair chance to compete, then the cap helps move towards that objective.