Long post (which I typically don't read), but the league is healthy and the CBA has definitely helped that. More teams are operating in the black now and league wide revenue has grown. The BoG which works on democratic tenets voted for the current system (CBA) = majority rules.
Pittsburgh, L.A., Washington & Chicago are large market cities that have adapted and won under the CBA. We still have huge advantages over smaller market/money teams like being able to buy out players, being able to afford LTIR contracts, unlimited budget for coaches, GMs and scouts, front loading contracts, etc.
Why can't we succeed under the same system that applies to all teams, plus along with the advantages (noted above) that we do have of course? We should just focus on winning and stop our whining & blaming others for our own problems.
It's not necessarily just about us.
The CBA negatively effects most big markets. The ones you named off all followed the same plan we're following now.
The point is that there is very little flexibility to build in any other way. And once you hit rock bottom it can take years to get out of it because of how restrictive the hard cap system is as we seen here and Edmonton and many others have also experienced.
For every LA and Chicago are a Miami, Toronto, Edmonton who didn't hit on high 1st rounders until recently and now we're seeing a bit of a momentum swing.
But 10 years of 3-4 teams winning and 26-28 teams not while half of those are in long term rebuilds presents a stale product to fans.
The game isn't growing partly due to the salary cap. Younger people are not watching the sport near as much and having nothing to cheer for is a huge part of it. Canadian fans especially where people would choose to rally behind one of our 7 teams have seen more rebuilds then playoff wins.
In 20 years when we're not even placing in major tournaments trying to reverse the momentum already 5-10 years in and growing will be impossible.
Whether it's soft cap, bird rights, luxury tax, some other CBA mechanism to lessen the overall talk around the cap and the CBA during the season or a huge investment in grass roots our country is in danger of losing its hockey dominance without a great deal of innovation and evolution over the next 10 years in my opinion.