ClosetOilersFan
Registered User
A brief tour of these forums, and it apparent that a very small minority of members here understand the purpose of the cap.
The cap is not designed to:
Keep ALL homegrown players on their respective teams [This would be accomplished by extending the age until UFA... as we know, it's actually been reduced, thus making locking in your players MORE difficult] Yeah, teams with lots of young talent don't like this, but most of them have small budgets and benefeit from the cap; small market teams can't get everything.
Stop long-term/major signings [related to point below]
Deflate salaries of Top 20 players [Franchise players will always be in demand, and warrent 5-20% of a team's overall payroll]
The Cap was designed to:
Create a FAIR environment where small-market teams such as Edmonton, Calgary, Pittsburgh, etc. could compete with big-city teams. Without the cap, Pronger/Iginla etc would not be with their current teams.
Under the old system, one of the rich teams would have simply outbid Calgary for Iginla and Edmonton for Pronger [Countless examples, but these are most relevant to me]. For instance, with Pronger, the Blues would have simply paid an extra 1-2 million, but the cap disabled them from doing this.
The cap's main benefeit is franchise players will be dispursed around the NHL, as opposed to being together on 5-6 teams who could afford 45million+ payrolls.
It's second benefeit will be that the average salary will in fact, go down. [It actually already has... people are forgetting that guys like Pronger would have earned MORE than 6.25 million under the old CBA; same goes for Iginla and Khabibulan [sp?]]
The top players will always earn top dollar, but at the end of the day, when teams can't go over 39, many players are going to have to accept lower salaries to play.
The cap WAS DESIGNED to increase profit and competition [thus the appeal of hockey to fans outside of big-city teams]. Now that teams such as Toronto have an excuse for not signing the big UFA's, they save on salary - their profit will go up [let's be realistic, the big-market teams aren't going to lose many fans over this; most that are lost probably don't make them much anyway...]
Trust me, the cap is already accomplishing this.
Fans of Edmonton, Calgary, Pittsburgh, etc. are already estatic and there's more than 60 days until hockey!
The cap is not designed to:
Keep ALL homegrown players on their respective teams [This would be accomplished by extending the age until UFA... as we know, it's actually been reduced, thus making locking in your players MORE difficult] Yeah, teams with lots of young talent don't like this, but most of them have small budgets and benefeit from the cap; small market teams can't get everything.
Stop long-term/major signings [related to point below]
Deflate salaries of Top 20 players [Franchise players will always be in demand, and warrent 5-20% of a team's overall payroll]
The Cap was designed to:
Create a FAIR environment where small-market teams such as Edmonton, Calgary, Pittsburgh, etc. could compete with big-city teams. Without the cap, Pronger/Iginla etc would not be with their current teams.
Under the old system, one of the rich teams would have simply outbid Calgary for Iginla and Edmonton for Pronger [Countless examples, but these are most relevant to me]. For instance, with Pronger, the Blues would have simply paid an extra 1-2 million, but the cap disabled them from doing this.
The cap's main benefeit is franchise players will be dispursed around the NHL, as opposed to being together on 5-6 teams who could afford 45million+ payrolls.
It's second benefeit will be that the average salary will in fact, go down. [It actually already has... people are forgetting that guys like Pronger would have earned MORE than 6.25 million under the old CBA; same goes for Iginla and Khabibulan [sp?]]
The top players will always earn top dollar, but at the end of the day, when teams can't go over 39, many players are going to have to accept lower salaries to play.
The cap WAS DESIGNED to increase profit and competition [thus the appeal of hockey to fans outside of big-city teams]. Now that teams such as Toronto have an excuse for not signing the big UFA's, they save on salary - their profit will go up [let's be realistic, the big-market teams aren't going to lose many fans over this; most that are lost probably don't make them much anyway...]
Trust me, the cap is already accomplishing this.
Fans of Edmonton, Calgary, Pittsburgh, etc. are already estatic and there's more than 60 days until hockey!