Fugu
Guest
Firstly - Revenue sharing in and of itself is an internal matter of the league and it's teams - it is not a limit placed on player salaries.
In theory a league could agree to additional revenue sharing and, as long as it otherwise abided by the terms of it's CBA and the PA could not argue that it was deflationary on salaries, it would not have to be agreed to by the PA.
In practice, given the current beast of a CBA, some buy in of the NHLPA would be necessary because there would need to be some amendments to define the treatment of any transfered revenues under Articles 49 (Revenue Sharing) and 50 (Salary Cap).
Interesting qualifier.
In a sense, the point is moot since this CBA does include revenue sharing, perhaps due to the fact that player funds are included in what is potentially shared or transferred?
Yet my sense would still be that a players' union could argue the deflationary aspect. Absent a cap (and revenue sharing and caps are separate principles), the case could be made that money transferred from one team to another limits what a top salary could potentially be. I see where the counterargument would be that perhaps - in total - the same amount of money gets spent, however that would need to be proved then, that indeed the money does go to players. One can then see why linkages and caps all got rolled into this monster of a CBA. I'd like to hear more along this line of thinking...