Alright...not that I want to declare dumb, but here I am. What market is this, and why the same fate? My first gut is Toronot, but then the why is the remaining question.
The fate in question is cap crunch... and its been happening for awhile but its becoming worst
Early in the cap era... the cap kept leaping by significant numbers. Canadian dollar was stronger... new tv deals got signed... and the escrow hadnt soured players yet so escalator was in full effect
The cap is roughly set up to support half the teams being spenders and half not... that would make it work
But in nhl parity at least 2/3 teams are spending... and the effects are cumalitive growing over time
So now players reach the breaking point on escrow... suddenly they are unwilling to use escalator... at same time canadian dollar is in prolonged slump... now we see a cap that used to grow 7-10% annual only growing 3-5%
Teams that have been successful are powerhouse teams... flagship teams like chicago and la... pittsburgh to a lesser extent... boston... rangers might be included... teams just entering this window are canadian teams like toronto and edmonton... maybe tampa might feel the same...
Its about having to rip your team apart when it took so long to build it in the first place
Look at out bruins... like 40 years without a cup... and then 5 years later we are letting lucic, hornton, iginla, ericksson, boychuk go for cash reasons... not allowed to replace them for cash reasons...
We had a strong enough nucleus we might have won 3 cups if we could add another impact player...
The gears grind forward... us/chicago/la got 6-7 year windows before complete rebuilds but next generation teams like tampa/edminton/toronto are going to struggle to get even 5 year windows.
The nhl sells the dream... suck and get rewarded in the draft with young affordable talent... but now check how affordable mcdavid, eichel, matthews are...
So now you suck... get a kid... have him for 7 years... pay top premium caphit while you have him... and are rebuilding 7 years down the road anyhow.
Big markets were only luke warm in their support of a hard upper cap to begin with... and have willingly poked holes in the cap ever since. Now that many of these teams have suffered by the cap, their support unquestionably has to be even more dilluted.
Other sports leagues have mostly gone towards a franchise exempt star player system so i expect hockey will adapt this model too. But this effects hrr 50/50 split with players... effects competitive even field for league... there will need to be compromise
I wont say this is the biggest stumbling block for new cba... but once cba is open i predict this issue will become part of the story