something i havent heard anyone talking about

[Alberta_OReilly_Fan]

so for a few years i have been making an argument that theres trouble in the nhl reguarding mostly second term contracts... also talking about how escrow and clawback is a growing problem with the players. ok...

this year rolls around... and a couple things happen... 1/the league and players say they wont opt out of the cba... and 2/a bunch of rfa second contract guys holdout forever with rumors of humongous contract requests... and then sign bridge deals at much shorter money... so what happened? i have a theory...

so everyone is talking about a new usa tv contract... and this expected money from gambling... and... the seattle expansion... so, it makes some sense not to opt out of the cba and have a work stoppage... that makes sense... but what about the young players taking bridge deals at reasonable money?

an argument i made for some time... is that the players are a union. and i have said that unions are known for one thing in this world... and that is protecting its senior members. unions in all walks of life want their older members to be paid more/protected more. weve been hearing older players complain they are losing 10-15% of their agreed contracts. for a player like taylor hall who had to settle for 6 million on his second contract... hes only going to take home around 5 million because of escrow/clawback. its not really the escrow that is the problem… there will always be escrow... its the fact that the escrow gets confiscated and not returned to the players.

so... heres my new theory that no one is talking about... i think when the players voted to not opt out of the cba… they told the owners they need this escrow fixed... and the owners said yes. i mean we all heard some of the talking heads explain it... the insiders said a month ago that there would be no raise in the cap for a couple years as they attempt to fix escrow... but what wasnt said?

if theres no raise in the cap... it means theres no money for raises. guys with existing contracts will get paid what they are owed... but new guys without contracts will get told theres no money.

effectively... until the new money rolls in from the gambling/us deal... the age of the insane contracts for 21 year old kids is over i think

so... either the union told this years rfa... or their agents figured it out... or the teams themselves explained it... but the idea of being paid BASED ON THE FUTURE CAP had to be stopped! handing out money based on what the cap might be in 2-3 years screws the players of today who were being paid on what the cap was 2-3 years in the past.

sanity is prevailing... its a good thing. the market is correcting itself. the union wants to protect its veterns and it told the owners {indirectly} stop overpaying the kids at the expense of the veterns… get rid of this escrow problem

a 6 mill contract is not exactly poverty anyhow... 7 mill in todays money is like 6 mill 5-6 years ago... so lets say 7 mill is the new proper rate for a 21 year old kid that is a first line star player... then contracts like braden point and company arent so shocking at all. its the normal reality of what these guys would get if there wasnt insane contracts like draisaitl and the people in Toronto screwing up the pay system.

looking at history... we see what Crosby, Ovechkin, stamkos got on their second deals... toews and kane… getslef, perry, kopitor… there was like 8 guys in the entire league that ever got more than 6 mill on their second contract and 5 of them had led their team to a cup... the other 3 were scoring leaders for the entire league. you had to be so extremely super special to break the 6 million dollar ceiling

McDavid is that special from todays generation... but who else qualifies? who else led the league in scoring in their first 3 years... or led their team to a cup win?

players like Tavares and Bergeron and hall and seguin were all very very very good players... they didnt get more than 6 million.

anyhow… i think its strange no one is really pointing out that the deals this year... arent that strange. the strange deals were the ones for marner and Matthews and draisdailt and ekbland and Eichel. those deals were paid because some idiot said they needed a % of the cap ceiling... and that the cap was going to raise... so the players had to be paid based on the future

it took a few years for the trickledown effect to rear its ugly head... but once the players started losing the escrow reality finally kicked in. its kind of what i said was going to happen so im not caught by surprise. my only surprise is i thought there would be a bloody lockout to get it done. im happily surprised that saner heads are prevailing.

i expect the spread between cap max and cap floor will ultimately be decreased. we see now every team goes to the max and that hurts the vetern players while rewarding the kids. it will be the players themselves that ask for a lower ceiling in the future. it doesnt make sense to a lot of you i know... most of you want to see the kids get paid... but that has NEVER BEEN HOW UNIONS BEHAVE

anyhow… had to say my piece. it doesnt really matter if anyone else is talking about this. the important thing is that the correction is happening and the good news is that its happening much less bloody than i feared.

its a good thing

Click to read more...

 

[sh724]

I didnt read all of that but a couple of things there will absolutely be an increase in the cap from year to year unless the economy in just about every NHL city goes into free fall. When however you are referencing said there would not be an increase in the cap, they most likely meant the NHLPA will not use the escalator. Per the CBA the PA has the ability to artificially increase the cap by up to 5% every year. In the early years the PA used this very liberally which led to a lot of the escrow issues. The PA finally figured out they should not be using it so much and has cut back the last couple years, with the understanding it will not be used so freely moving forward.

The owners are not going to give up the 50/50 split so if the PA wants escrows close to zero the only plausible solution would be to roll back salaries. Regardless of what the floor and ceiling are the players receive 50% of HRR. Players total salaries across the league are over 50% of HRR so escrow is needed to get the split to 50/50. Escrows are typically taken out higher than needed to ensure a 50/50 split and the PA will get a check back once the accounting is finalized for that year, so when you hear "escrow is X%" what the players actually lose will most likely be less than that.

It will never be possible to completely eliminate escrow as for there to be no escrow team salaries would have to average to the midpoint, most teams are over midpoint and far more teams are at the ceiling than the floor.

I could see in the future what is currently the midpoint adjusted to where its closer to the ceiling than the floor something like $100MM ceiling $90MM midpoint $75MM floor. That is just random numbers and obviously it wouldnt be called the midpoint anymore. But i dont see the gap between floor and ceiling shrinking

 

[supsens]

If they land big money on the tv deal and only slightly raise the cap escrow could vanish that year. They chose to not opt out of the current deal they have not signed a new one yet so a lockout/strike is still possible

 

[MNNumbers]

To reduce escrow losses for players requires a few things:

Let's try this explanation. Using the negotiated cap ceiling as a way to reduce escrow is acceptable in the CBA, but at the same time bypasses the CBA's declared method for determining the figures, which establish a salary cap midpoint from estimated HRR, and then decide the ceiling and cap from there. Since the BOG and the PA are actually using an Ad Hoc method right now, they have no contractual guarantee of the same going forward...

Thus, to really fix the problem requires a re-write of the CBA rules to determine the cap. This has been discussed before, and the easiest is this:
The amount of player costs which are counted to the players' share of the 50% of HRR is NOT the same as the amount of player costs which count against the cap. This is because the 2 definitions are different.
It happens that players costs for the 50% rule come to very nearly 97% of cap space (this is a chance happening, but empirically, it comes out this way with a high degree of regularity. Thus, we can assume this will be an ongoing relationship.
Therefore, let's take the best revenue projection, and divide it in half, so we have a great projection of the players' share. The cap should end up 3% higher than this, and you could declare the cap ceiling there. However, it is likely that the players would accept 3% escrow losses for keeping the cap high, so do the prior calculation, and then raise the ceiling 3% more.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough HRR available right now for that to work, because the cap ceiling would have to decrease. Thus, some transition rule would need to apply, like....
The cap ceiling will increase by exactly 1M each year until league wide HRR catches up to the calculations. (Obviously, some number other than 1M could also be used here). And, this transition rule should be contracted in the CBA as well.

The fascinating trend is that superstar contracts go up each year (highest UFA contract is always more than the previous one). And, thus, more and more of cap space is going to be eaten up by a small number of players. As the OP mentions, this favors the superstar at the expense of the common man. How that continues will be interesting, to say the least.

 

[mouser]

so for a few years i have been making an argument that theres trouble in the nhl reguarding mostly second term contracts... also talking about how escrow and clawback is a growing problem with the players. ok...

this year rolls around... and a couple things happen... 1/the league and players say they wont opt out of the cba... and 2/a bunch of rfa second contract guys holdout forever with rumors of humongous contract requests... and then sign bridge deals at much shorter money... so what happened? i have a theory...

so everyone is talking about a new usa tv contract... and this expected money from gambling... and... the seattle expansion... so, it makes some sense not to opt out of the cba and have a work stoppage... that makes sense... but what about the young players taking bridge deals at reasonable money?

an argument i made for some time... is that the players are a union. and i have said that unions are known for one thing in this world... and that is protecting its senior members. unions in all walks of life want their older members to be paid more/protected more. weve been hearing older players complain they are losing 10-15% of their agreed contracts. for a player like taylor hall who had to settle for 6 million on his second contract... hes only going to take home around 5 million because of escrow/clawback. its not really the escrow that is the problem… there will always be escrow... its the fact that the escrow gets confiscated and not returned to the players.

so... heres my new theory that no one is talking about... i think when the players voted to not opt out of the cba… they told the owners they need this escrow fixed... and the owners said yes. i mean we all heard some of the talking heads explain it... the insiders said a month ago that there would be no raise in the cap for a couple years as they attempt to fix escrow... but what wasnt said?

if theres no raise in the cap... it means theres no money for raises. guys with existing contracts will get paid what they are owed... but new guys without contracts will get told theres no money.

effectively... until the new money rolls in from the gambling/us deal... the age of the insane contracts for 21 year old kids is over i think

so... either the union told this years rfa... or their agents figured it out... or the teams themselves explained it... but the idea of being paid BASED ON THE FUTURE CAP had to be stopped! handing out money based on what the cap might be in 2-3 years screws the players of today who were being paid on what the cap was 2-3 years in the past.

sanity is prevailing... its a good thing. the market is correcting itself. the union wants to protect its veterns and it told the owners {indirectly} stop overpaying the kids at the expense of the veterns… get rid of this escrow problem

a 6 mill contract is not exactly poverty anyhow... 7 mill in todays money is like 6 mill 5-6 years ago... so lets say 7 mill is the new proper rate for a 21 year old kid that is a first line star player... then contracts like braden point and company arent so shocking at all. its the normal reality of what these guys would get if there wasnt insane contracts like draisaitl and the people in Toronto screwing up the pay system.

looking at history... we see what Crosby, Ovechkin, stamkos got on their second deals... toews and kane… getslef, perry, kopitor… there was like 8 guys in the entire league that ever got more than 6 mill on their second contract and 5 of them had led their team to a cup... the other 3 were scoring leaders for the entire league. you had to be so extremely super special to break the 6 million dollar ceiling

McDavid is that special from todays generation... but who else qualifies? who else led the league in scoring in their first 3 years... or led their team to a cup win?

players like Tavares and Bergeron and hall and seguin were all very very very good players... they didnt get more than 6 million.

anyhow… i think its strange no one is really pointing out that the deals this year... arent that strange. the strange deals were the ones for marner and Matthews and draisdailt and ekbland and Eichel. those deals were paid because some idiot said they needed a % of the cap ceiling... and that the cap was going to raise... so the players had to be paid based on the future

it took a few years for the trickledown effect to rear its ugly head... but once the players started losing the escrow reality finally kicked in. its kind of what i said was going to happen so im not caught by surprise. my only surprise is i thought there would be a bloody lockout to get it done. im happily surprised that saner heads are prevailing.

i expect the spread between cap max and cap floor will ultimately be decreased. we see now every team goes to the max and that hurts the vetern players while rewarding the kids. it will be the players themselves that ask for a lower ceiling in the future. it doesnt make sense to a lot of you i know... most of you want to see the kids get paid... but that has NEVER BEEN HOW UNIONS BEHAVE

anyhow… had to say my piece. it doesnt really matter if anyone else is talking about this. the important thing is that the correction is happening and the good news is that its happening much less bloody than i feared.

its a good thing

Please come up with a more descriptive title for your thread so anyone visiting the forum will have an idea of the topic you want discuss.

If not the mods will either come up with a new title or close the thread.

 

[Alberta_OReilly_Fan]

Please come up with a more descriptive title for your thread so anyone visiting the forum will have an idea of the topic you want discuss.

If not the mods will either come up with a new title or close the thread.

I would take no issue if a mod had a better title for the thread... ive never seen any ability on my part to edit one of my titles. if someone would enlighten me how to do this, I dont mind doing it but in this case I guess it might be easier if I asked you to do it? or if you cant... then I am asking if someone could teach me how to do it myself.

i do try to outly the entire heart of the argument in the very first sentence of the post if that counts for anything

 

[LadyStanley]

At the top of the page, just above the first post is a "Thread Tools" menu item. Click that and one of the options is "Edit Title"