1. How is a lowered UFA age, coming no doubt with the new CBA, going to help the Oilers? They'll lose players even earlier under the new CBA. You consider Luke Richardson and Todd Marchant impact players?
Just incase you're still misguided:
-UFA players are not who you should build your team around. There should be a select few on a championship team. Most of the good lpayers on winning teams are between the ages of 22-30. The Oilers had full control over who they kept and who they didn't between these ages (well 18 - 30 really)
2. Teams shouldn't have a schedule where they all compete within a certain time period. There should be very few (5-6) elite teams in the league. All the rest are either
a) Rebuilding
b) Declining
c) Stuck in mediocrity
The 24 or so teams that are not elite should strive to become elite by rebuilding, making good trades of blowing up an aging core and starting over again.
I fail to see how forcing a team to spend a minimum, reducing the UFA age and putting a relatively low max on improving teams/rebuilding teams/elite teams helps them.
For a rebuilding team, spending a minimum amount above what they wuold naturally spend in a less restrictive CBA like the 94-04 one will lead them to make poor decisions personnel wise, sign veterans to fill spots to meet the minimum instead of playing a young player, or signing a younger player to an inflated contract to meet the minimum.
For improving teams they will have most of their players in the 22-30 age range, which will mean that they will become more expensive as their team ages. Having a lower cap means it will be a lot harder for improving teams like Vancouver, San Jose, Ottawa and tampa Bay to stay together.
For elite teams, (if they even exist) they will have to gut their team of a star player or two every season to stay under the cap, against their will, or try and convince their players to take below market value, cap or not, to stay with the team. The first part is not fair to the team and the 2nd part is not fair to the players.
Management will still make mistakes, that is to be certain, but the amount of impact those mistakes have on the bottom line will be minimized, and thus the incentive to improve (or the NEED to improve) will be far lower than the previous CBA, since the teams will say 'shucks, we'd like to re-sign this guy but we don't have the cap room'.
