More From GM Meetings

[syntax 359]

A great idea that I saw from a member of a Buffalo Sabres' board was to link each player's salary directly with a proportion of the cap. That way, as revenue goes up, salaries rise, and as it drops, salaries drop without teams needing to do buyouts/trades to get under a lower cap.

So you could sign Hossa to a deal guaranteeing 10% of the salary cap. When the cap is $57 million, he makes $5.7 million. If it drops to $50 million, he makes $5 million. I think that would be a great way to do salaries but we'd have to wait for them to put it into the next CBA. Unless I'm mistaken, it really would not be that much different from the escrow account, but this way everyone would know before the season started how much money they would be making.

That is a very interesting idea.

Just a thought... Maybe the next CBA could have some sort of an agreement that the cap can't go down by more than x% over the previous year. Then at least they'd be able to plan a bit better instead of holding their breath and waiting.

That'd be tough, especially in some of the hard hit markets like ours. Luckily, I think a fair amount of Red Wings fans near Detroit would rather stop eating than stop going to Red Wings games.

[Wombat 26]

I don't see the player's association agreeing to allowing a decrease in player's salaries over their contracts.

Yes, but the general direction of the economy is up. As revenues increase, each player's paycheck would also increase, from the richest players all the way to the lowest paid players. This economic downturn aside, I think the players would win because each salary is guaranteed to rise yearly with the cap. The owners win because they have true cost certainty with payroll for the occasional dip in league profits (or major recession).