Revolutionary Salary/Contract Idea

BAdvocate

Mediocrity is the enemy of any Dynasty
Feb 27, 2003
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Well, I must say it's nice to come back a week later & see that there is some interesting discussion, and not someone just asking why the players would do it (after I explicity said for discussion sake to ignore what most players would think of this).

Couple of things. This salary would not be based on a % the max cap, it would be based on a % a of 'self-imposed' cap ownership chose to use (my example was 10/11th aka $40 of $44 by the Senators). this self-imposed cap might also allow them to make an exception during the season for this kind of trade or injuries (although existing player salaries would stay at the self-imposed cap chosen at the beginning of the season).

As far as what would happen when a player was traded....my response is the player would get paid the same $ figure and current players of that team might have agree to sacrifice a small % of their salary. I can't remember of examples in the NHL, but I know in other pro-sports, athlete re-structure their contracts in order to allow their teams to get better by adding players. Also, teams could trade/waive/etc players in order to fit the salary into their plan. Smart business minds could figure out how to work around trades and make everyone happy.

That is essentially what this idea is about, creating a partnership between the players as well as between players & ownership.

Why would ownership be willing to risk paying a player $x amount because the cap went up by x % the following season? The same reason they'd risk paying a player less if the cap went down.

It's good to see some posts saying it's better for the players, while some say it's better for the owners....which means it might actually be fair. Both sides sacrifice, both sides gain.

It may be unrealistic, difficult, unfair, who knows, but it would be nice to at least force the two sides to think about different ways to do things and form a partnership of some sort.

Thanks for the feedback.
 

RTWAP*

Guest
It'll never happen. Sorry. The NHLPA isn't going to take the chance that revenues do drop and thus everyone takes a paycut. The owners aren't going to go for a system that hands out automatic raises to every player if revenues go up, nor will they go for something that potentially dictates how much they spend without regard to what they actually want to do. GM's won't go for it because it potentially handcuffs them even more come playoff time when they're looking to improve and they want to add a player, but would have to trade away a guy making equal money that they want to keep to make it all happen.

I think you're thinking this idea is much more of a change than it actually is. The current system has exactly the characteristics you just described above. If revenues go up, every player gets more money (currently 54% of league revenues). If revenues go down then every player makes less (the same 54%). GMs need to leave room for late season acquisitions (same as before). The ONLY difference is whether a player's salary is linked to league-wide salary inflation AFTER the first year.

The only reason player salaries are so hard to figure out is because of the 24% rollback; once the effects of it start to dissipate in another couple of years, we won't have guys making $738,045. Besides, it still does nothing to prevent teams from using the "Per team policy, terms of the contract were not disclosed" line so we could all still be guessing who's making what.

Contracts are registered with the PA, and dollar amounts are released shortly thereafter.

$6M this year is 13.64% of the upper limit this year; maybe next year it's less, maybe next year it's more. But the players and owners know what the players under contract are going to make, regardless of what revenues do.
That is not exactly true. Players' salaries in the current year float based on their percentage of the league-wide salary, and are adjusted in direct proportion to by changes in the league-wide revenues. None of the players knows how much they will make this year. None.

If a team is at $28M for next year and the cap goes to $50M, the team goes from having $16M in cap space to now $22M in cap space. Under the proposed system, they'd still have 63.64% of the cap taken up, leaving them just $18.2M available.
This is true for all teams. So suddenly everyone has more room to sign the same group of UFAs. So those UFAs get huge raises. How is this fair? Every player in the league contributes to the growth in revenues that year, but only a few benefit?

There's a lot to be said for being able to look at raw numbers and knowing, "If revenues go up, we have extra cap room available" instead of realizing that if revenues go up, a lot of that potential room is already eaten away by automatic salary increases - again, something the owners are not going to go for.
True, but it keeps the situation needlessly complicated. You can overpay now in the hopes that a player (see Chara) will eventually be worth their salary. If you take the absolute salary out of it, you are left with a simpler problem. "What percentage of a successful team does Chara represent?" Some idiot GM may think he's worth 20% but smart GMs won't.

I think your point about a growing cap touches on a big point. GMs and teams know they're going to make mistakes and they would rather be able to 'grow' past their mistakes via the discounting that will happen to older contracts as league revenues grow. So the system helps them to hide their mistakes. Not exactly a great attribute from a fans point of view.

Paying by percentages of the upper limit may sound good, but it'll never fly.

I'd never bet on it happening either. ;)
 

RTWAP*

Guest
Sorry, but this entire concept is complete nonsense. Not only is it impossible, as IB points out, but it does not even make sense.

This bit about it being more "fair"? Hogwash. As if that has anything to do with anything. Understand this - players care about maximizing earnings, with very few exceptions. What's more, every young player wants the stars to earn high salaries, because they - being elite athletes - believe in themselves enough that they believe that they will be stars and will cash in.

That is all.
Nonsense? Impossible? Not make sense? Hogwash?

There's a good chance one of us is completely missing the point. ;)
 

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