Pepper said:
Not true, small markets were always going to be handicapped no matter how well they were run. Fact is that on average large market teams always did better than small market teams and no matter how well your team is run, your market remains about the same size. Rangers were a poorly run ship for the last 6 years of the previous CBA, yet they still got enough money to have the highest payroll of the league. San Jose which was ran by excellent GM (Lombardi) still couldn't manage to have a above-average budget.
So the cause & effect theory works very marginally here.
As this is really off-topic to this thread and with the risk repetition from last fall, I try to make it breaf. With the way NHL is run now (playoffs), there's always the question of definition of success (only a few teams/players can be succesful compared to others) and I think most people believe success should be rewarded, including financially.
I don't understand your position that size of a budget is a goal in itself, the players are more important to success rather than what they are paid, but if they are succesful under the facilities a franchise can provide them with, I believe they should be rewarded.
Since NHL can do little about the demographics of USA/Canada, the market size is pretty much out of their control. Although I agree to a point with you, that money can cover up a team's failures (or at least to repeat them a'la Rangers year after year), but this is made too big an issue. I have yet to see a person to come up with "an alternative NHL" for the past 10 years or so (even in hindsight), which players should have played where at each particular time, so that every player would have been paid relative to their abilities and all teams would have been happy (even those who missed the playoffs). Edmonton might have some points here, but is the Canadian dollar fundamentally a hockey issue? Cause-effect works really everywhere, there might only be more variables in each case.
IMO, the role of the management seems to me to be generally overvalued on these boards, no matter how good they are, with crappy players or with crappy market place they can do only so much.