One set of boundaries - Parity on the Ice - Close but no Cigar

[Epsilon]

But that's not what I'm asking... I guess I'm not making myself clear.

Rumor is big market cap is $36M, small market cap is $29M. For the 2005-2006 season, how will it be determined which teams get $36M and which get $29M?

You're misinterpreting what the numbers mean. It is NOT a "big market cap" and a "small market cap". It is a "do you want revenue sharing dollars or not" threshold. If Melnyk decides to load up and spend to the max for Ottawa, they are perfectly entitled to do so. As is any other team that has acquired the meaningless "small-market" label from the press.

 

[Boltsfan2029]

You're misinterpreting what the numbers mean. It is NOT a "big market cap" and a "small market cap". It is a "do you want revenue sharing dollars or not" threshold. If Melnyk decides to load up and spend to the max for Ottawa, they are perfectly entitled to do so. As is any other team that has acquired the meaningless "small-market" label from the press.

So all teams can spend to the max. That's basically all I was trying to find out. So many people have been insisting on the team-by-team cap that I was wondering about the scenario under that scheme. I'd much rather have one cap for all teams, as it's the only way that makes any sense to me.

Thanks.

 

[davemess]

But that's not what I'm asking... I guess I'm not making myself clear.

Rumor is big market cap is $36M, small market cap is $29M. For the 2005-2006 season, how will it be determined which teams get $36M and which get $29M?

No the salary cap range is 29 to 36 Million.

Each team on its own will have to decide what it can afford to spend.... the league wont tell any team what to spend. It will be up to each team to figure out how much they can afford to spend on salaries.

 

[shakes]

Even if they do sign him, they will owe Flames 5 1st rounders which will be a HUGE return under the new CBA where drafting & player developement will have much bigger role in building a contending team.

Where do you get that the 5 first round picks compensation will still exist in the new CBA?.. oh thats right.. you don't know.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

When Nashville or Carolina come to town do they have an EQUAL chance to win the game?? This whole parity was intended to increase fans in smaller markets by giving their home team better chances to win against the big spenders of old ..

Has this rumoured CBA addressed that ??

First of all, yes, they do.

Second of all, parity is not the NHL's concern. This was about money and money only. You act like things going as they have, but everyone's salary being at a lower level, is nothing. That was the point of the lockout, the only point. Owners wanted salaries at a lower level...everything else that comes with that is just a bonus or something that the NHL has sold as helping out the fans.

 

[Mess]

As a small market fan, the biggest differences are going to be realized in July and March. In July, when free agency begins, it's not unreasonable to expect my team to plug some holes with something other than AHL re-treads. Maybe my team won't sign Peter Forsberg, but there is a good shot at picking up some decent talent. In March, as the trade deadline looms, my team can consider making that deadline deal that just might get them in the playoffs. For the past few years, it's been about selling off whoever makes the most and getting little in return.

Most of all, I can feel like the team I root for is actually part of the NHL and not just a black and gold version of the Washington Generals.

It will be nice to look at the TSN free agent rumors and see more than NYR,PHI,TOR,DET

That is all true no argument here ..

Taking it one step further there is nothing stopping smaller markets from landing big UFA ?? Some players are driven money and some desire to win the cup and some by lifestyle choice and picking the city to live in and raise a family ..

So the one thing you also touched on it a team like yours as you suggest making ever effort to get into the playoffs is great .. and as a result hopefully grows the market with success .. The flip side is that as a playoff team you are forfeiting early draft picks and changing the way your team operates in the future as well .. Now you have to make great picks when you are picking in the teens rather then the lottery and if your supply of young talent dries up are forced even more to rely on UFA to boost the team ..

At which point does the league consider your team self sufficient and no longer requiring assistance from others and now can spend freely into the lux tax range team revenue permitting of course ..

 

[Timmy]

At which point does the league consider your team self sufficient and no longer requiring assistance from others and now can spend freely into the lux tax range team revenue permitting of course ..

You mean, of course, that the team voluntarily goes into the lux tax zone, not that the league picks up the phone and says, "Okay, Nonis, no more welfare cheques for you - you're officially big market."

The spending below/above the rev sharing level is going to be voluntary.
The league isn't going to "consider" anything. The league isn't going to consider you "self-sufficient."

Each GM/owner will decide whether they want the cash or the payroll. The league won't have anything to do with their decision.

 

[ladybugblue]

I didn't want to make a new topic but my question is... do you guys think their was more parity during the last 10 years or during the 80's?

Actually it is a really good question. My opinion is that there was more parity in terms of economics but that didn't mean more teams was always competing and winning the Stanley Cup. Teams that drafted well and found good talent and chemistry won more often than other teams. However, there was still many teams that went to the finals that were in fact different teams...like Philadephia, Minnesota, Vancouver, Calgary, and Boston. I think drafting, scouting, and team chemistry will become important again and no the parity wasn't there since there were really only three teams that won in the 80s but it wasn't due to economics that changed in the late 80s and early 90s.

 

[AM]

why do you bother

Seriously, I really have to wonder how old you are dude, it shouldn't be that hard.

This has been explained to you like a million times already.

Under old CBA:
Nashville has player X who's their best player. X turns 30 and will a UFA next summer, he knows that Maple Leafs (for example) can and wants to pay him say $8M per year when he will become an UFA. Nashville can afford to pay him say $6M at max. X tells Nashville "sorry, I won't resign for $6M because I can get $8M from big teams". Nashville is close to making the play-offs so they have to make the choice whether to trade X before deadline to a big team and get something for him or make a play-off run and lose X for nothing in the summer. Big teams don't have to make that choice, they can give him the $8M he wants and keep him next year too. Result: very uneven playing field, no parity whatsoever for financial reasons.

New CBA:
Nashville has the same player X, he knows that all top teams are close to or at the cap and can't afford to give him the $8M he wants. Nashville is well below the cap and can afford to him $6M. X sees that as the best option and signs with NAshville. Nashville can try to make a real playoff run without losing their best player next summer to big teams. Result: much more even playing field, lots of parity.

Now there will be times when some big team has payroll low enough to pay X more than Nashville can afford but those situations will be much more rare and the big team has little reason to do it because they will compromise the rest of the team by giving one player too much of the capped payroll.

Clearer now?

if he dosnt understand by now, hes not ever going to.

 

[AM]

:0

First of all, yes, they do.

Second of all, parity is not the NHL's concern. This was about money and money only. You act like things going as they have, but everyone's salary being at a lower level, is nothing. That was the point of the lockout, the only point. Owners wanted salaries at a lower level...everything else that comes with that is just a bonus or something that the NHL has sold as helping out the fans.

So if a mraket can afford a 33 million dollar team, are they better of, competatively, without a salary cap or with a 36million dollar salary cap?

Man, where is the dividing line between ignorance and spin?

 

[Mess]

You're misinterpreting what the numbers mean. It is NOT a "big market cap" and a "small market cap". It is a "do you want revenue sharing dollars or not" threshold. If Melnyk decides to load up and spend to the max for Ottawa, they are perfectly entitled to do so. As is any other team that has acquired the meaningless "small-market" label from the press.

Correct ..

Precisely what I am getting at .. If your team wants to spend to the max go ahead but don't expect revenue sharing dollars to do it ..

However the budget of each team needs to enter into this revenue sharing or not ..

If a smaller market team in bringing in $50 mil total revenue including additional revenue sharing money .. then in theory based on a 54% budget that team should only spend $ 27 mil on player contracts if it intends to want to make and profit ..

So going to $36 mil as in your example would cost the team an additional ($9 mil base and $7 mil luxury tax) .. for a total of 16 mil ..

$27 mil + $16 mil = $43 mil total spending and your team total revenue income in thsi example is $50 mil .. You ended up spending 43/50 = 86 % of your revenue on player salaries. That is higher then the Levitt report that said salaries at 75% is killing the NHL .. and Bettmans all we can afford of 54%.

What team would do this and why if it had any business sense at all ?

Why would the league provide the team revenue sharing to condon this stupidtity..

Thus my theory that teams receiving Revenue sharing money SHOULD NOT pass the big wall that is in front of them and the Lux tax threashold at $29 mil..

Therefore for sake of discussion teams receiving additional funding really are expected to play below the $29 mil level for the system to make logical sense..

 

[Mess]

You mean, of course, that the team voluntarily goes into the lux tax zone, not that the league picks up the phone and says, "Okay, Nonis, no more welfare cheques for you - you're officially big market."

The spending below/above the rev sharing level is going to be voluntary.
The league isn't going to "consider" anything. The league isn't going to consider you "self-sufficient."

Each GM/owner will decide whether they want the cash or the payroll. The league won't have anything to do with their decision.

See I disagree

What determines how much if any Revenue sharing you receive ??

How do we know if Vancouver pays or receives revenue sharing money ?? and obviously the answer would be huge in its cause and effects to team budget and spending habits as a result.

The CBA has to include Owner accountability in the decisions each team makes .. If a small market lowers ticket prices and then expects a bigger revenue sharing handout .. Where are the checks and balances in the system to prevent these things?? .. You are going to have to have rules for everything .. Min ticket prices in all markets to qualify to receive assistance money perhaps ..and I am suggesting here that if a team spends into lux tax then that may effect how much $$$ it receives ..

 

[Mess]

First of all, yes, they do.

Second of all, parity is not the NHL's concern. This was about money and money only. You act like things going as they have, but everyone's salary being at a lower level, is nothing. That was the point of the lockout, the only point. Owners wanted salaries at a lower level...everything else that comes with that is just a bonus or something that the NHL has sold as helping out the fans.

No you need to go re-read the thread and my posts .. You are way off here on that post ..

I agree its all about money in this CBA and PROFITABILITY for teams .. I never said it was nothing ...its huge ..

I am talking about revenue sharing dollars and luxury tax threasholds and team budgets and how that will effect parity under the new CBA ..

 

[Timmy]

See I disagree

What determines how much if any Revenue sharing you receive ??

Ummm, a formula maybe?

How the **** do I know? The point is, the cap will be the same for every team in every market, and each team will do what it feels is best.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

So if a mraket can afford a 33 million dollar team, are they better of, competatively, without a salary cap or with a 36million dollar salary cap?

Man, where is the dividing line between ignorance and spin?

With a $36M cap, like I just said. What the hell are you talking about? Talk about spin, you automatically label my post garbage pro-pa spin without even reading it?

 

[mooseOAK*]

You're misinterpreting what the numbers mean. It is NOT a "big market cap" and a "small market cap". It is a "do you want revenue sharing dollars or not" threshold. If Melnyk decides to load up and spend to the max for Ottawa, they are perfectly entitled to do so. As is any other team that has acquired the meaningless "small-market" label from the press.

It is my impression that revenue sharing will depend on market size and not how much a team spends on salaries.

 

[AM]

we dont know yet....

See I disagree

What determines how much if any Revenue sharing you receive ??

How do we know if Vancouver pays or receives revenue sharing money ?? and obviously the answer would be huge in its cause and effects to team budget and spending habits as a result.

The CBA has to include Owner accountability an the decisions each team makes .. If a small market lowers ticket prices and then expects a bigger revenue sharing handout .. Where are the checks and balances in the system to prevent these things .. You are going to have to have rules for everything .. Min ticket prices in all markets to qualify to receive assistance money perhaps ..

Though if I were to guess, I'd say that they would pool the teams and have the ammount they are below a threshold be a driving force for their revenue sharing.

I guess they could have another driving force too... unprofitability.

They could set limits on the second driving force. The owners "buy in".

If you have zero driving force, you get zero revenue sharing.

 

[A Good Flying Bird*]

but it wasnt based on the size of the owners wallet.

Oh for crying out loud.
Name one team Stanley Cup team that was based on the size of the owner's wallet.

Detroit? Only the most recent cup featured any major UFA signings. ANd even Hull and Robitaille were two UFAs who were no longer wanted by their old teams.
Detroit's payroll is high because jackasses like Pete Karmanos went and offered Fedorov the sun and the moon as an RFA.
So if Fedorov was worth $5M, then what was Yzerman, SHanahan and Lidstrom worth?
Everybody else was drafted, or came in trades of significant cost.

New Jersey? How many big UFA signings can you peg on big Lou?

Colorado? Look at their cup wins. They've got Sakic (draft) Forsberg (Lindros trade), Roy (Montreal meltdown). Yeah, they had some major deadline deals (Ray Bourque comes to mind), but these guys, like Detroit, aren't responsible for the high salaries all over the league.


I can understand small market fans who are upset because they've watched their best players leave, year after year. I was an expos fan until 1987, when the owners colluded against the players.

But a salary cap isn't going to help much. Fact is, Jarome Iginla is still going to get big offers from teams that don't mind maxing out their cap.

See, the salary cap means no team in the league will have consistent lineups.
You know why Detroit fans and Colorado fans love their hockey?
Because they've had the same core for a decade.
What does Steve Yzerman mean in Detroit.
What does Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic mean in Colorado?

If a team drafts three great players, like Yzerman, Fedorov and Lidstrom, will there be room to keep them with a salary cap?

My fear is that there will not be with this new system.

You guys will whine and whine "Now you know how it feels to be an Oilers fan"

Well, if you wanna fix the NHL, you don't want everybody to feel like an Oilers fan.
You want everyone to feel like a Wings fan.

Unfortunately, a salary cap accomplishes more of the former than the latter.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

No you need to go re-read the thread and my posts .. You are way off here on that post ..

I agree its all about money in this CBA and PROFITABILITY for teams .. I never said it was nothing ...its huge ..

I am talking about revenue sharing dollars and luxury tax threasholds and team budgets and how that will effect parity under the new CBA ..

I'm not really way off. Those things don't really affct parity under this CBA. All teams are pretty much going to be spending between $25M-$35M. That will result in about as much parity as you are going to get.

Revenue sharing, luxury tax, team budgets don't really make a difference. What does a team budget matter if every team can afford the floor, which is competative with the cap? What does revenue sharing matter if every team paying it will still spend $36M anyway? The revenue sharing and luxury taxes are only about making sure the small market teams don't lose money while they are spending the floor. I really don't understand how any of it affects parity.

 

[AM]

we disagree...

Oh for crying out loud.
Name one team Stanley Cup team that was based on the size of the owner's wallet.

Detroit? Only the most recent cup featured any major UFA signings. ANd even Hull and Robitaille were two UFAs who were no longer wanted by their old teams.
Detroit's payroll is high because jackasses like Pete Karmanos went and offered Fedorov the sun and the moon as an RFA.
So if Fedorov was worth $5M, then what was Yzerman, SHanahan and Lidstrom worth?
Everybody else was drafted, or came in trades of significant cost.

New Jersey? How many big UFA signings can you peg on big Lou?

Colorado? Look at their cup wins. They've got Sakic (draft) Forsberg (Lindros trade), Roy (Montreal meltdown). Yeah, they had some major deadline deals (Ray Bourque comes to mind), but these guys, like Detroit, aren't responsible for the high salaries all over the league.


I can understand small market fans who are upset because they've watched their best players leave, year after year. I was an expos fan until 1987, when the owners colluded against the players.

But a salary cap isn't going to help much. Fact is, Jarome Iginla is still going to get big offers from teams that don't mind maxing out their cap.

See, the salary cap means no team in the league will have consistent lineups.
You know why Detroit fans and Colorado fans love their hockey?
Because they've had the same core for a decade.
What does Steve Yzerman mean in Detroit.
What does Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic mean in Colorado?

If a team drafts three great players, like Yzerman, Fedorov and Lidstrom, will there be room to keep them with a salary cap?

My fear is that there will not be with this new system.

You guys will whine and whine "Now you know how it feels to be an Oilers fan"

Well, if you wanna fix the NHL, you don't want everybody to feel like an Oilers fan.
You want everyone to feel like a Wings fan.

Unfortunately, a salary cap accomplishes more of the former than the latter.

thats all there is to it.

 

[habfan4]

See I disagree

What determines how much if any Revenue sharing you receive ??

I'm guessing the level of revenue a club generates will determine whether or not it receives any revenue sharing monies and how much.

It may even turn out that revenue sharing funds are completely independant of the teams' payroll (teams may be able to spend at luxury tax levels and still receive the transfers). The NHLPA who appear to be the driving force for revenue sharing are not being altruistic and hoping any shared funds end up in the owners pockets, I'd imagine that they prefer those monies be spent on their memberships salaries.

 

[Mess]

Ummm, a formula maybe?

How the **** do I know? The point is, the cap will be the same for every team in every market, and each team will do what it feels is best.

In a real life example ..

If a person is on welfare and receiving gov't assistance, the purpose is to provide food and house to be able to live not allow people to go out an buy fancy new sports cars if they desire ..

In the analogy above substitute paying bills as food and housing and player contracts for fancy car and you have what I am getting at in the thread.

Assistance is based on need and not desire.

Luxury tax in its name alone is a luxury that not all teams can afford and the ones that can afford need to be able to pay for that from disposable income and not expect further handouts from others to cover these poor spending habits.

 

[A Good Flying Bird*]

1. This was never about parity. It was about giving each team similar tools to compete. Hell, and it was only about that to the fans. To the owners it was only about dollars.

2. This was not so much about where the NHL was, but where it was heading. Though in a bad place financially, it was not in a bad place competitive wise . . . so many in the playoffs assured that upsets inevitably would happen each year. But this was more about where it was heading. Unchecked the NHL would have become a joke where all of the stars were on 3 or 4 teams and the rest were feeder teams to those teams. Try selling tickets outside of those 3 or 4 markets if that is what kind of league you have.

1. Teams with progressive owners find a way to compete.
Or did you miss the Red Wings reversal in fortunes after 20 years stuck like gum on the bottom of the NHL's shoes. Not coincidentally, it began when Mike Illitch took over.

2) Any team in the league can compete if they have an owner who's willing to market and invest.
If he's an absentee owner simply looking to sell the team for a profit in 6 year's time, the product will stink.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

See I disagree

What determines how much if any Revenue sharing you receive ??

How do we know if Vancouver pays or receives revenue sharing money ?? and obviously the answer would be huge in its cause and effects to team budget and spending habits as a result.

The CBA has to include Owner accountability in the decisions each team makes .. If a small market lowers ticket prices and then expects a bigger revenue sharing handout .. Where are the checks and balances in the system to prevent these things?? .. You are going to have to have rules for everything .. Min ticket prices in all markets to qualify to receive assistance money perhaps ..and I am suggesting here that if a team spends into lux tax then that may effect how much $$$ it receives ..

Revenue sharing doesn't go team by team, it's a flat rate divided by 30. A small market can't lower ticket prices and bring in $50M in revenue and than expect the big teams to say 'here you go, here's $15M so you can reach the floor'

All teams put, for example, 30% of their local revenues into revenue sharing. Than you divide the total by 30 teams, and that's how much each team get's back. So small market teams put in less than they take out, big market teams the opposite. But it doesn't mean that a small market can have no revenues and take out more than everyone else because they need it. And, the teams like Vancouver who might be right in the middle as far as revenue, probably get nothing. They will put it the same amount as they take out sometimes.

 

[A Good Flying Bird*]

It won't be "determined." A team will either be spending over 29m, and therefore paying tax and not receiving rev sharing, or they will be under 29m, in which case they'll get the rev sharing.

Epsilon's post (7 up) summarizes a possible scenario nicely.

If the Bill f***ing Wirtz and his Chicago f***ing Blackhawks are getting a f***ing penny from Mike Illitch, I'm gonna throw a fit.

Can you imagine the nerve of that ***hole?
The guy operates an Original 6 market in one of the biggest tv markets in the WORLD, home to dozens of major corporations, playing in a brand new arena, and he wants help???

He's the reason why the NHL is bush league.