Will the NHL ever have Luxury Tax? / Should it have?

[The Thin White Duke]

I...would actually support that. interesting idea, though the league will probably never go for it.

Salary retention is already a step in that direction. It mostly depends on whether the league values short or long term parity more.

In the short run (one season) parity suffers, there would be bottom feeders with a 30mil cap getting destroyed against top teams with a 90+ mil cap.

In the long run (5+ seasons) there would be more parity. Bottom feeders can rebuild faster by buying up assets with cap. Top teams would become near-dynasties until their core gets too old and they run out of futures to keep the elevated cap running. They then get replaced by the teams they were buying cap space from.

 

[Jeti]

As a leafs fan, would love to see this happen. Salary caps are so tedious, its just wrong that great teams like Chicago and LA have to get worse just because they did a good job drafting and now cant afford all the players they acquired

Did Chicago draft Sharp or Hossa? Did LA draft Richards, Carter or Gaborik?

I don't get why you're feeling sorry for them for winning multiple cups. Yes, they drafted really well, but they also made mistakes in giving huge contracts to some players, not all of whom were drafted by them. They "have to get worse" because of their own mistakes and for the most part they haven't even gotten that much worse - Chicago has had to gut their supporting cast multiple times and they keep winning. Frankly, it should take near perfect management to have a dynasty. It would be "wrong" if the league was changing rules on the fly to specifically target these great teams, but they're not - they're all working in the same system and everyone knows the rules.

To be honest, I don't think your opinion is really about the Kings and Blackhawks at all, but rather the fact that the Leafs can't just buy their way out of their problems. The majority of hockey fans around North America will not agree with you that the cap is "tedious". It is great for the league to have parity and for small market teams, mostly in markets where they're trying to grow the game, to actually have a chance to win, which attracts new fans. There's a reason the big market owners agreed to things like the cap and revenue sharing that might work against them in the short term: growing the game is in everyone's best interest in the long run.

In fact, the parity created by the cap is grossly exaggerated in its extent. Look at the most recently successful franchises - Boston, LA, Chicago, NYR (tons of series wins despite no cup). Not exactly small markets. There's still a huge gap between the floor and the cap ceiling, ~35%.

 

[Ducks in a row]

Will the NHL ever have a lLuxury Tax like the MLB and NBA? It would also introduce sign and trades into the NHL. Luzury tax would mean that teams can re-sign players and go over the cap. If a team goes over the cap they would be required to pay the extra amount to the league as a luxury tax. You cannot go over the cap to sign guys through free agency unless you trade for their bird rights through a sign and trade.

I hope not having a salary cap like the NHL is so much better.

 

[tucker3434]

Luxury tax is just a path to the cap. It would be going backwards as far as the league is concerned. Will never happen.

 

[MikeBabchuk]

I think it's pretty much been demonstrated at this point why despite looking good on paper, the cap has forced the teams into false parity as a result of teams simply having to shed their young star players or lose them for nothing, and also the jokes of the Pronger and Horton trades, among others.

Sure, it looks good that the league is competitive. But when elite teams are forced to sell off valuable players to other teams and dismantle what could be a perennial contender, it shows the fundamental flaw of this hard cap. Even well managed teams will be unable to keep the core of players together that they have often drafted and developed.

It is especially flawed when it comes to rich, big market teams. OK, the playing field has been levelled, but teams like the Leafs and Rangers are forced to spend a relatively minuscule amount and ice an inferior product. Yes, management teams have and continue to learn the importance of drafting and developing your core, but considering you'll likely be unable to keep that core together, it's pretty unsatisfying and not really fair.

These big market teams have far more fans than the small market teams and so it is also nonsensical that a market with 20 million people that has fans worldwide (Rangers) is on the same playing field as the Arizona Coyotes.

Now that the cap has been around for 10 years, we have been able to see how it's going to work. Teams suck for a while, they assemble cores largely through drafting, they pick up discount droppings (often young stud ones from teams that are against the cap), become good and might win the Cup but often will not, and then they reach a point where they are forced to make non-hockey decisions despite having the money and let stars walk or trade young stars away.

I think the pattern is predictable and unfortunate and it really isn't ideal.

I would support changes that allow teams to retain players they have drafted and developed to a certain number over the cap. I mean if you make a bunch of bad signings and managerial decisions, tough luck. Stuff happens. But if you're a team that's drafted and developed well and are forced to dump your young superstar for non-hockey reasons... that does not sit well with me.

It's great for teams like the Islanders who took advantage last year, or Calgary, or Columbus. But it sucks for the integrity of the league, it sucks for some of the contenders that have been managed reasonably well, and it sucks for the majority fans.

 

[LaCarriere]

Yes we must live in a welfare state. No matter how well you draft and develop players. We must hand those players to the poor teams.

No matter how well you market your team, you must pay a penalty to be successful. So we can have teams in stupid markets that do nothing but suck blood from the league.

No matter what state of rebuild you are in or how much profit you are making, we must force these teams to spend a certain amount. Of course the rich well marketed teams will have to pay a penalty for this too.

And what has this done for the NHL?

It has made the product semi unwatchable, the name recognition of players is gone and we have a bunch of average teams battling it out for the Championship. The last great team was the early 00's Wings.

Yes the cap has killed the game, and it's a damned shame.

It's allowed a sport that would only be profitable in at most 15-20 cities to exist in 30 team league. It's called growing the sport.

It's both interesting and ironic that typically only Toronto fans are against revenue sharing and a hard cap, since most of them would prefer a sport where they could spend 150M on a roster and buy their way out of their misery, not share profits, and exist in a 6 team league (the last time they were relevant).

 

[MessierII]

No why would we want to emulate the two most disastrous leagues in pro sports.

 

[LaCarriere]

Yes we must live in a welfare state. No matter how well you draft and develop players. We must hand those players to the poor teams.

No matter how well you market your team, you must pay a penalty to be successful. So we can have teams in stupid markets that do nothing but suck blood from the league.

No matter what state of rebuild you are in or how much profit you are making, we must force these teams to spend a certain amount. Of course the rich well marketed teams will have to pay a penalty for this too.

And what has this done for the NHL?

It has made the product semi unwatchable, the name recognition of players is gone and we have a bunch of average teams battling it out for the Championship. The last great team was the early 00's Wings.

Yes the cap has killed the game, and it's a damned shame.

The funny / ironic thing is that you, as a Leaf fan, your team hasn't drafted or developed ****. You haven't signed **** on the FA market. You haven't had to be in a situation to give players away because of the CBA requirements. You haven't had to give players away to poor teams.

You describe all these potential problems of a league with a hard cap that forces extremely well drafting teams to sell assets, but your team hasn't had to do that. You just wish that your team was in a situation where they had that problem, but there wasn't rules forcing them to do so.

It's pretty obvious that you're just mad that your team can't buy their way out of their troubles.

 

[emg0827]

Salary retention is already a step in that direction. It mostly depends on whether the league values short or long term parity more.

In the short run (one season) parity suffers, there would be bottom feeders with a 30mil cap getting destroyed against top teams with a 90+ mil cap.

In the long run (5+ seasons) there would be more parity. Bottom feeders can rebuild faster by buying up assets with cap. Top teams would become near-dynasties until their core gets too old and they run out of futures to keep the elevated cap running. They then get replaced by the teams they were buying cap space from.

i would actually set a "cap" on the amount of cap space one can trade, this will at least keep team from REALLY bottoming out at just employing ahl players while amassing first round picks/prospects from other teams. i would say the most one team can trade would be 10mil below what the current floor would be. similarly, i would say you only allow teams to buy at maximum 10 mil above the current cap. essentially thats enough to sign 1, maaaybe 2 young star players, or sign a bunch of extra depth players for a playoff run. that would at least ensure that every once an a while a young player on a loaded team wouldn't be retained. for an example think Hawks in 2010. An extra 10mil in cap space woulda allowed them to sign probably buff/brouwer, but niemi and laad would still walk.

 

[McShogun99]

I wouldn't mind if every team has the option to name one player on the team a "franchise" player. So how it would work is that players contract would not count against that teams cap for its duration. If that player is traded then his cap counts against the new teams cap. Teams could use this to hide a bad contract or just on their highest paid player.

 

[Jeti]

I wouldn't mind if every team has the option to name one player on the team a "franchise" player. So how it would work is that players contract would not count against that teams cap for its duration. If that player is traded then his cap counts against the new teams cap. Teams could use this to hide a bad contract or just on their highest paid player.

This only heightens the importance of tanking for that one special franchise player, which is contradictory to what the above poster said (re: "tanking" exacerbated by the cap system).

Figures an Oilers fan would post that. Really, I haven't seen a single good argument against the current system in this thread. There's just a bunch of people proposing things that'll help their favorite team with no consideration for the rest of the league. At best, we've seen some legitimate complaints about the current system, but that's entirely different than actually proposing something that fixes them without creating bigger problems.

The Pronger/Savard/Horton trades are jokes but that doesn't mean they should throw out the cap. A rule like a player can't be traded if they've missed >40 consecutive games would solve it quite easily. No matter what system they come up with, there will be loopholes that'll be exploited and subsequently closed.

 

[zombie kopitar]

No why would we want to emulate the two most disastrous leagues in pro sports.

XFL & WWE?

HGH for the enforcers with increased staged fights; and the fox sports puck glow trailing the punches

 

[lebowski74]

Someone please explain this parity thing? And how it is so much greater than that off the MLB

 

[DyerMaker66*]

Apparently, people prefer watching a muddled mess of middle-ground teams over great teams.

 

[Rebels57]

Would love it as a Flyers fan..but I recognize that's not good for the league overall.

 

[cptjeff]

Apparently, people prefer watching a muddled mess of middle-ground teams over great teams.

Most people want the team they root for to actually have a chance. People root for their teams, they don't root to see the Blackhawks stomp over everyone else, including their team.

 

[Rebels57]

Someone please explain this parity thing? And how it is so much greater than that off the MLB

5 teams have combined to win the past 10 World Series.

Baseball does not have great parity.

 

[DyerMaker66*]

Most people want the team they root for to actually have a chance. People root for their teams, they don't root to see the Blackhawks stomp over everyone else, including their team.

That seems like an ownership/ management problem, not a problem of the system.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

What needs to be fixed is restricted free agency. 22 year old players have too much leverage and too few years under RFA and can cap strap a team. We end up getting guys like Hamilton, Saad, getting unexpected raises out of their entry level deal that teams are unable to PREPARE for and to me the preparing part is key.

I would propose that the hard cap is fine but needs to be restricted to UFA contracts only - like a 30 million dollar limit on all UFA money.

Then have a separate RFA/ELC cap. Another 42 million.

Now, when a team is negotiating with UFAs, those contracts will limit the team's ability to spend on UFAs in the future, including pending UFAs, so they can go into these signings knowing more predictably that they can or can't go on a spending spree. If a new extension, like Toews/Kane puts them over the UFA limit, the signing is not allowed until cap space is made. I think it's fair that the blackhawks squeezed every ounce out of Kane/Toews in their entry level deals and RFA but it should also be fair that the long term Hossa/Sharp contracts have real consequences now that the Toews/Kane RFA years are over.

The one thing that need to happen for this to work. RFA signings can no longer include buying UFA years. They need to be separate contract.

Basically my proposal is to separate UFA and RFA portions of the salary cap in order to ensure all teams can retain their RFAs more predictably. It also prevent teams like New York from icing rosters "farmed in Winnipeg" because there's a clear limit on UFA spending.

 

[kingznut101]

cap hell

I hate to say it, but the Oilers are the next team to be facing cap hell, with all the 1st overalls ELC expiring not to mention McDavid, Nurse and the FA's they just signed. Welcome to the land of Cap Hell.

 

[ottawa]

I wouldn't mind...if your owner is cheap or you can't sell hockey in your city then maybe you shouldn't have one? It's bad enough some teams (especially Canadian ones) are already handicapped due to high taxes, to handicap them further because poor teams can compete just adds salt to the wound.

 

[zaYG]

I think it's pretty much been demonstrated at this point why despite looking good on paper, the cap has forced the teams into false parity as a result of teams simply having to shed their young star players or lose them for nothing, and also the jokes of the Pronger and Horton trades, among others.

Sure, it looks good that the league is competitive. But when elite teams are forced to sell off valuable players to other teams and dismantle what could be a perennial contender, it shows the fundamental flaw of this hard cap. Even well managed teams will be unable to keep the core of players together that they have often drafted and developed.

It is especially flawed when it comes to rich, big market teams. OK, the playing field has been levelled, but teams like the Leafs and Rangers are forced to spend a relatively minuscule amount and ice an inferior product. Yes, management teams have and continue to learn the importance of drafting and developing your core, but considering you'll likely be unable to keep that core together, it's pretty unsatisfying and not really fair.

These big market teams have far more fans than the small market teams and so it is also nonsensical that a market with 20 million people that has fans worldwide (Rangers) is on the same playing field as the Arizona Coyotes.

Now that the cap has been around for 10 years, we have been able to see how it's going to work. Teams suck for a while, they assemble cores largely through drafting, they pick up discount droppings (often young stud ones from teams that are against the cap), become good and might win the Cup but often will not, and then they reach a point where they are forced to make non-hockey decisions despite having the money and let stars walk or trade young stars away.

I think the pattern is predictable and unfortunate and it really isn't ideal.

I would support changes that allow teams to retain players they have drafted and developed to a certain number over the cap. I mean if you make a bunch of bad signings and managerial decisions, tough luck. Stuff happens. But if you're a team that's drafted and developed well and are forced to dump your young superstar for non-hockey reasons... that does not sit well with me.

It's great for teams like the Islanders who took advantage last year, or Calgary, or Columbus. But it sucks for the integrity of the league, it sucks for some of the contenders that have been managed reasonably well, and it sucks for the majority fans.

Reasonably well managing isn't what should create a perennial contender. The great part about the salary cap is that GMs have to sit down and make a decision about what soon to be expensive talent is worth it while which is worth shedding.

Look at the Bruins shedding Hamilton. They decided that it would be better to keep other talent and restock the prospect pool. We will see if it was a mistake but the game is better with players of that caliber moving and the drama involved in those decisions being made.

 

[PucksInDeep]

I wouldn't mind if the NHL had some sort of system where teams had a "cap discount" that they could use on players they had drafted and developed. Something where they could offer the same salary as other teams but with a slightly lower cap hit... or something.

No idea how that would actually be implemented, but I like the idea of allowing teams to more easily keep their home-grown talent.

 

[Kraniumm]

I think it's pretty much been demonstrated at this point why despite looking good on paper, the cap has forced the teams into false parity as a result of teams simply having to shed their young star players or lose them for nothing, and also the jokes of the Pronger and Horton trades, among others.

Sure, it looks good that the league is competitive. But when elite teams are forced to sell off valuable players to other teams and dismantle what could be a perennial contender, it shows the fundamental flaw of this hard cap. Even well managed teams will be unable to keep the core of players together that they have often drafted and developed.

It is especially flawed when it comes to rich, big market teams. OK, the playing field has been levelled, but teams like the Leafs and Rangers are forced to spend a relatively minuscule amount and ice an inferior product. Yes, management teams have and continue to learn the importance of drafting and developing your core, but considering you'll likely be unable to keep that core together, it's pretty unsatisfying and not really fair.

These big market teams have far more fans than the small market teams and so it is also nonsensical that a market with 20 million people that has fans worldwide (Rangers) is on the same playing field as the Arizona Coyotes.

Now that the cap has been around for 10 years, we have been able to see how it's going to work. Teams suck for a while, they assemble cores largely through drafting, they pick up discount droppings (often young stud ones from teams that are against the cap), become good and might win the Cup but often will not, and then they reach a point where they are forced to make non-hockey decisions despite having the money and let stars walk or trade young stars away.

I think the pattern is predictable and unfortunate and it really isn't ideal.

I would support changes that allow teams to retain players they have drafted and developed to a certain number over the cap. I mean if you make a bunch of bad signings and managerial decisions, tough luck. Stuff happens. But if you're a team that's drafted and developed well and are forced to dump your young superstar for non-hockey reasons... that does not sit well with me.

It's great for teams like the Islanders who took advantage last year, or Calgary, or Columbus. But it sucks for the integrity of the league, it sucks for some of the contenders that have been managed reasonably well, and it sucks for the majority fans.

I totally agree. Especially some sort of take on the part I bolded.

 

[Poignant Discussion*]

The funny / ironic thing is that you, as a Leaf fan, your team hasn't drafted or developed ****. You haven't signed **** on the FA market. You haven't had to be in a situation to give players away because of the CBA requirements. You haven't had to give players away to poor teams.

You describe all these potential problems of a league with a hard cap that forces extremely well drafting teams to sell assets, but your team hasn't had to do that. You just wish that your team was in a situation where they had that problem, but there wasn't rules forcing them to do so.

It's pretty obvious that you're just mad that your team can't buy their way out of their troubles.

Ummmm was saying that as a hockey fan, the Leafs for the last ten years are not worth discussing.

Let's look at the Ottawa Senators for starters. Marshall Johnson drafted incredibly well for them and under the cap was forced to trade players. Not only trade players but trade players at a disadvantage as the other teams knew they needed to be gone.

How was that fair for a team basically built via the draft?