So a cap isn't the solution after all

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thinkwild

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The market is already correcting from the Sakic offer period. No one makes those offer sheets anymore, and no collusion is charged because of it. With a market correction, as the players suggested, and knowing what we know now, the RFA salaries can be lowered, and arbitration and comparables will keep it that way. NYR wont be allowed to pay more than the small market values set for arbitration eligible players. They can fill their boots on UFAs all they wish to no effect.

Even an NBA style cap, that gives cost certainty just like a hard cap, wont save all the teams currently in jeopardy or allow small markets to sign star players under an exemption they still cant afford. The owners preferred system still doesnt guarantee all the franchises stay. So there can be a compromise that can achieve similar non-perfect results.
 

Tom_Benjamin

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DW3 said:
Thanks for the link. having reread them, all of them had a means of controlling salary, whether it was cap, a "Performance Based Salary System" or some other fancy (but stupid) way of phrasing it (C'mon, P-4?). All in all, the league has said the "status quo" is unacceptable and something has to be done.

Of course. That's why the NHLPA rejects them all as cap systems. They all include pegging NHL salaries (the cap) to an artificially defined revenue number.

What they do not all do is address the disparity between payrolls. Under the performance based system, the Stanley Cup winner will have a much larger payroll than a team that misses the playoffs. That's the point.

Of course the owners want to control salaries. They don't care about salary disparities or competetive balance. They don't have to because the first is meaningless and the second can hardly be improved.

And everybody knows a Luxury tax would do about as much good as hiding the owner's pen lol. If a team's willing to overpay for a player, then they'll be willing to pay the tax on him (I urge you to look at the Yankees).

Nonsense. It has to reduce the disparity. The rich teams will still spend the same amount, but less on salary and more on the tax. The tax becomes part of their calculation. They will have a smaller payroll. The tax portion of what they do spend goes to low revenue teams. That too, becomes part of the calculation for these teams, and they spend more. They have a larger payroll.

How can it not reduce payroll disparity?

I think it is a pretty dumb idea myself because I don't care about payroll disparities and it is thinly disguised revenue sharing. But if payroll disparities are important, a luxury tax will reduce them. They are not important to the owners and revenue sharing is something the owners refuse to do in any significant way. That's why the owners reject a luxury tax.

Tom
 

iagreewithidiots

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Tom_Benjamin said:
Nonsense. It has to reduce the disparity. The rich teams will still spend the same amount, but less on salary and more on the tax. The tax becomes part of their calculation. They will have a smaller payroll. The tax portion of what they do spend goes to low revenue teams. That too, becomes part of the calculation for these teams, and they spend more. They have a larger payroll.

I would love to see some examples of this in action.
 

thinkwild

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iagreewithidiots said:
I would love to see some examples of this in action.


It does have the potential to produce some curious situations. Minny could run a $30mil on $70mil in revenue, advance in the playoffs and make $20mil in profit. St L could run a $60mil payroll on $80mil revenue, lose in the 1st round and lose $30mil.

And St Louis would send luxury tax money to Minnesota. The luxury tax would give the owners an excuse not to sign someone. Leafs can say, look we'd love to sign Palffy, but the luxury tax would make him cots $10mil and he's just not worth that. And fans will understand. And pressure will be off.

Detroit would have to think hard about signing Shanny and StevieY. But the good thing is it costs them without affecting the salaries of anyone else.

Some teams, like Florida are losing money even though they have a great young team and are likely to know success soon. Florida doesnt really need to sign UFA's. They need some of their players to develop into their roles. In the meantime, it would seem ok to me for them to take some of the luxury tax revenue by Detroit re-signing Shanny and Toronto re-signing Leetch, Nolan, Roberts, and Niuewy. Florida is legitimately losing money at this point in the cycle, but one day could return to the success of the rats where they would again be contributing while Detroit rebuilds and needs money. Dont laugh - it could happen. Teams like Fla shouldnt be forced to spend that money on salaries if they were really losing money.

Surely its obvious this contributes to reducing payroll disparity. Despite fan insistence that baseball doesnt work because of the Yankees, Baseball owners are all quite happy with the system and feel it is working better lately. Not to mention there is already no comparable in hockey to the Yankees. It just cant happen because UFAs are 31 in hockey and 26 I think in baseball.
 

iagreewithidiots

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thinkwild said:
Surely its obvious this contributes to reducing payroll disparity. Despite fan insistence that baseball doesnt work because of the Yankees, Baseball owners are all quite happy with the system and feel it is working better lately. Not to mention there is already no comparable in hockey to the Yankees. It just cant happen because UFAs are 31 in hockey and 26 I think in baseball.
Oh it is quite obvious.

Quite obvious that a luxury tax does nothing to reduce payroll disparity.

Im glad the owners are happy. Them being happy doesnt mean the luxury tax does anything to effect increases in payroll.
 

thinkwild

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I would thikn that a luxury tax would lead to an overall increase in payroll+luxury taxes. Detroit may decide just to pay the tax to allow Shanny and Yzerman to retire on their own terms and up his payroll even further. Why would $70 mil be all he could afford? And by giving that money to a certain set of teams, they may spend more causing overall salaries to go up. But it would seem obvious to lessen disparity by discouraging the top 5 spenders, and propping up the bottom few. Even if overall more money was spent by the owners on salaries with the new taxes added on.

Even some of the owners own proposals are stated by Daly to only reduce disparity but purposefully wont eliminate it. Surely that goal can be met in a compromised way then. Once you accept that neither sides goal is to actually eliminate it. The owners can still profit while there is a payroll disparity. As Baseball demonstrates. Hockey already has better competitive balance, so that doenst need to be worried about.
 

thinkwild

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The criteria for who receives revenue sharing, should there be such a thing is interesting. One proposal was apparently that teams in a market of over 2 million televisions, couldnt receive it. Would that be the defintiion of a big market?
 

Winger98

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DW3 said:
Sorry Winger, probably should have been a little more in depth and specific. I'm for a cap, I like the $45-50 mil. range, with increases of 10% (or so) a year to allow for Group II and stuff. I'm still ot totally sold on the soft cap idea though, especially after the T-wolves proved how easy it was to get around it. Yes, they got caught, but how teams are there that don't get caught. Either way, both the NFL and the NBA have proven how a cap helps the league prosper. There's no "clear cut, expected" champion, like in MLB and NHL, there's true parity between the teams.

Revised arbitration,lower rookie max salaries, and lower UFA age are all almost a given, no matter which way the CBA goes.

As a baseball fan, I have to admit, seeing the Yankees spend like mad and then fall short feels damn good ;)

I'm a soft cap/tax fan, but I won't mind any system that allows organizations to build and keep together their teams. That's a big selling point for me, and I know I prefer sports where the names on the jerseys can be counted on being there for a few years.

The $45-50 million number seems like a good number, too. I crunched some numbers awhile back and found that if all teams over $50 million in team salary last season were brought down to that exact number, and all of the other team salaries remained the same, it would average out to right around $40 million per team. Total player salary costs would be in the ball park of $1.2 billion, which I think is a lower percentage of the total revenues than the NHL claims to be gunning for, though I'm just going off the top of my head with it.
 

DW3

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Winger98 said:
As a baseball fan, I have to admit, seeing the Yankees spend like mad and then fall short feels damn good ;)

I'm a soft cap/tax fan, but I won't mind any system that allows organizations to build and keep together their teams. That's a big selling point for me, and I know I prefer sports where the names on the jerseys can be counted on being there for a few years.

The $45-50 million number seems like a good number, too. I crunched some numbers awhile back and found that if all teams over $50 million in team salary last season were brought down to that exact number, and all of the other team salaries remained the same, it would average out to right around $40 million per team. Total player salary costs would be in the ball park of $1.2 billion, which I think is a lower percentage of the total revenues than the NHL claims to be gunning for, though I'm just going off the top of my head with it.

I just like watching the Yankees lose for the same reason I .ike watching the Rangers, Wings, Leafs, Lakers, etc. lose. Because they try to buy a championship instead of earn it. And then sit around scratching their heads, pointing fingers, and passing the blame around when they lose.

As for the $45-50 mil. figure, I like it because I thought I remembered an ESPN thing that showed that most of the NHL was around there already, give or take about $10 mil. It's a big enough number to allow for big time UFA signings, but small enough to let smaller teams be competetive.
 

A Good Flying Bird*

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DW3 said:
If that line of thinking still in the NHL head office, we'd still be cheering for the Original 6. Just because a team hasn't suffered through years and years of mismanagement. Why else would a person but a team if not to have them be competetive? As for supporting the team through the rough times, I've heard and read plenty of stories about how you could hear a pin drop in the Joe during the "80's. And Columbus may have been the wrong example to use here, since they had a 180+ game sellout streak going before the luckless Panthers came into town a few months ago.

Yes, the Wings had troubled times. 40 years worth. But the franchise survived. Illitch took over and it thrived.
I'm not saying new teams should not try to compete. I'm saying that they shouldn't expect gauranteed business and on-ice success.
You can't build a hockey market in a day. It takes years.
A good hockey team helps (re:colorado ... let's see if that place sells out all the time when the team goes in the tank for 5 straight years or so.)



DW3 said:
Hey, nobody ever said all the owner's weren't cheap skate tightwads. Everybody will admit that Chicago and Boston need new ownership, somebody not afraid to spend a buck or two on the team. Nothing we can do about it, unfortuneitly.

And on the other end of the scale is NYR, who can't seem to spend money fast enough. IMO-They're one of the worst teams out there for running up salaries. They overpay on underachieving talent, getting rid of hot prospects for aging veterans..

I agree.
But I think there is a lesson that can be learned by looking at the 4 US Original Six teams.
On the one hand, free agents flee Boston and Chicago. On the other, free agents flock to the Rangers and Detroit.
But there's a difference between the Rags and Wings.
Free agents take less money than they can get elsewhere to play in Detroit.
The Rags have become home to free agents looking to cash in, and, of course, salary dumps.

Of the four, only Detroit is being run with any sense.
ANd these are the proven markets.
What this tells me is that NHL owners aren't very competent.


DW3 said:
I like Matt Damon (a lot more then Ben Affleck anyway, lol) and I'm not saying he, or anyone else for that matter, isn't entitled to whatever they can earn. What I'm saying is, how can Pitt., Calgary, Nashville, etc. compete with Det., NYR, etc.? As you pointed out, Illitch and gang own very profitable side businesses, which some of them have used to make their product better. But some owners don't have a multi-million $$ business to help them out. Some of them only have the team, which isn't enough to compete with the big-timers. It's like me getting a bidding war with Trump or Bush. What I'm saying is needed is a way for the smaller market teams to be able to compete with the big boys. Yes, the Wings may have helped him buy everything else, but if all he had right now was the team and the arena, would he be making money?

I agree.
the revenue inqueties must be addressed.
If owners were serious about helping out the small market teams, the rich owners would have agreed on a real revenue sharing plan.

But they couldn't give two floaters.
They aren't going to do it.

They want the entire fix to come from the players.
 

DW3

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May 13, 2004
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Newsguyone said:
Yes, the Wings had troubled times. 40 years worth. But the franchise survived. Illitch took over and it thrived.
I'm not saying new teams should not try to compete. I'm saying that they shouldn't expect gauranteed business and on-ice success.
You can't build a hockey market in a day. It takes years.
A good hockey team helps (re:colorado ... let's see if that place sells out all the time when the team goes in the tank for 5 straight years or so.)





I agree.
But I think there is a lesson that can be learned by looking at the 4 US Original Six teams.
On the one hand, free agents flee Boston and Chicago. On the other, free agents flock to the Rangers and Detroit.
But there's a difference between the Rags and Wings.
Free agents take less money than they can get elsewhere to play in Detroit.
The Rags have become home to free agents looking to cash in, and, of course, salary dumps.

Of the four, only Detroit is being run with any sense.
ANd these are the proven markets.
What this tells me is that NHL owners aren't very competent.




I agree.
the revenue inqueties must be addressed.
If owners were serious about helping out the small market teams, the rich owners would have agreed on a real revenue sharing plan.

But they couldn't give two floaters.
They aren't going to do it.

They want the entire fix to come from the players.

The owners know they're going to have to give up something to get something. I imagine they'll give up a few years on the UFA, not push the rookie cap as low as they could, and give up some arbitration rights.
 
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