The salary cap needs to go.

[Skarjak]

If Boston were to win it, they would probably be the worst cup winners of the last ten years. They are a team with a ton of obvious flaws that managed to get through a very weak Eastern conference and lucked out on getting matched with chokers for the finals. I can certainly see the OP's point.

 

[Puckschmuck*]

Yes because I don't want to see crappy hockey.

I hate to break it to you, but the cap ain't going nowhere. Why? Likely for the main reason that a lot of floundering teams, mostly in Bettman's precious sunbelt zone, would bleed like hell if trying to compete and would force those teams to fold. As long as the NHL are willing to fight for the "growth of the game", they realize that there is only so much money that many non-traditional markets can spend in their sensitive markets, therefore they need to be competitive. This, IMO, is the main reason why there won't be a cap removal for a very long time, if ever.

 

[Stephen]

So you'd rather see teams 10 or so teams be extremely competitive and stacked, and teams like Phoenix sign 20 guys to min contracts?

In some ways, that makes sense. If Team X is drawing 13000 people a home game at $30 an average ticket or something and you have Team Y selling standing room tickets for $40+ and filling the arena till the end of time with their rabid fanbase, who is also paying to keep Team X afloat financially, it's just nicer for the fanbase of Team Y to enjoy a better product. It'd be nice to have fanbases that care get to watch super teams than have generic cap neutered teams league wide duke it out for the title of least mediocre.

 

[LadyStanley]

Gotten OT and away from the *business* aspects of the thread.

(Head over the NHL Talk forum if you want to continue the discussion about quality of the on ice product.)