The Ever-Increasing Cap, Ridiculous Contracts, and Hitting

[Bring Back The Bruise Bros 1,029]

If the owners of NHL franchises push to eliminate hitting from the game - that's when they lose me as a fan.

If anything - the owners should push to get rid of the instigator rule; let the tough guys handle the rats.

Same here.

There wouldn't be nearly as many guys throwing elbows high and going knee on knee if they had to worry about getting their asses kicked on the next shift. Don't wanna turn this into an enforcer/instigator debate, though.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Bring Back The Bruise Bros

[Nightfall 871]

If the owners of NHL franchises push to eliminate hitting from the game - that's when they lose me as a fan.

If anything - the owners should push to get rid of the instigator rule; let the tough guys handle the rats.

For the first time in LGW forum history, F. Michael and I are in total agreement.

[Wing Across The Pond 196]

I do believe the cap is a large problem and it will have to be fixed during the next CBA negotiations. The NHL has a really inflated Cap IMO. They need to do something about it.

Regarding the contracts the NHL needs to look at having a limit of them like 7-8 Years. I know the NBA has a 7 Year limit with the salary being around $120 Million IIRC.

I think another problem is that the NHL is no where near being the 'biggest' sport in the US, and people may be thinking that a way to combat that is to show everyone that there is a lot of money involved. Encourage more young people to play if they have the potential to earn 'football-type numbers'. Just a thought

According to the current CBA players salary cannot account for more than a fixed percentage (54%?) of league revenues. So at least theoretically GMs cannot overspend. Bettman claims that league revenues are rising so the cap raises with it. So as long as their accounting is sound teams should not be able to get into too much trouble.

As for the small market teams does not NHL have some kind of revenue sharing scheme?

Why is the cap inflated? If anything I would rather see more money go to the players rather than to the owners.

The shame is that a few organisations out there don't have sound accounting. Yes I'd like to see money go to the players, but if more and more money goes to the players over the owners then we fast get to a situation whereby the owners can't afford to pay the players, then we get teams having to relocate every few years, or file for bankruptcy and require a league bail-out which isn't good for the sport.

[ogreslayer 1,069]

I had to share this. An absolutely hilarious find given what happened on Wednesday. An excerpt from an interview with Craig Leipold done in April of this year:

Are you making money? “We’re not making money, and that’s one reason we need to fix our system. We need to fix how much we’re spending right now. [The Wild's] revenues are fine. We’re down a little bit in attendance, but we’re up in sponsorships, we’re up in TV revenue. And so the revenue that we’re generating is not the issue as much as our expenses. And [the Wild's] biggest expense by far is player salaries.”

Well it's a good thing that Leipold isn't contributing to the problem personally by overpaying players right? Right?

http://m.startribune.com/sports/?id=146998015&c=y

[JPT 26]

Are people here really complaining about player salaries and contract lengths? This is too funny. No Wings fans had issues when the Wings were able to outspend small markets and pick up a Hull and Robitaille in the offseason but when another team is able to sign players the Wings covet the system is broken?

Players are worth what owners will pay them. Period. Grow up.

If the Wings don't want to overpay for a Parise and Suter then they will have cap flexibility moving forward to make a play at a Weber next year or to make a trade for a guy and have the cap room to make it work.

[Wing Across The Pond 196]

Are people here really complaining about player salaries and contract lengths? This is too funny. No Wings fans had issues when the Wings were able to outspend small markets and pick up a Hull and Robitaille in the offseason but when another team is able to sign players the Wings covet the system is broken?

Players are worth what owners will pay them. Period. Grow up.

If the Wings don't want to overpay for a Parise and Suter then they will have cap flexibility moving forward to make a play at a Weber next year or to make a trade for a guy and have the cap room to make it work.

People aren't really complaining about us not securing players like we did pre-cap. Your example isn't applicable since there were no restrictions back when they signed the players you mentioned. What we're discussing here is that increasing caps are forcing teams to overpay, and some don't have the money to do that. If anything, what you argued about the Wings pre-cap proves us right. We spent big because we could, other teams may not have because they couldn't. With an increasing cap teams are feeling like they can spend money that they don't have. Then you wonder why teams like Phoenix are struggling and needing league help financially. Nothing to do with people complaining that we didn't land a certain player.

[zenway9 1]

Salaries are rising in direct correlation with the cap, and they have become ridiculous as a result.

Exactly. If you have it to spend, you'll spend it.

Are people here really complaining about player salaries and contract lengths? This is too funny. No Wings fans had issues when the Wings were able to outspend small markets and pick up a Hull and Robitaille in the offseason but when another team is able to sign players the Wings covet the system is broken?

Players are worth what owners will pay them. Period. Grow up.

If the Wings don't want to overpay for a Parise and Suter then they will have cap flexibility moving forward to make a play at a Weber next year or to make a trade for a guy and have the cap room to make it work.

So what was to stop the other organizations from blowing a S-ton of money to get the top players in the pre-cap era??? I'm not sure I am understanding your statement.

[zenway9 1]

One more thing...I have no problems with Minny signing both players for the amount of money they did. However, hockey is a TEAM sport. You cannot win the Cup with two players and you cannot win the Cup when you are so severely cash strapped. What if a couple players go down with injuries mid-season and Minny is fighting for their playoff lives? There is no way they are going to be able to go out and pick up any talent at the deadline...but, "Hey, we got Parise and Suter!"

The one thing I have to say about Kenny is that as much as we ALL love to bust his stones, he is a smart yet cautious (maybe sometimes too cautious) GM who thinks many moves ahead and isn't one to go after the big name for the sake of having the name on his team. Oh, and did NOONE get my joke on the original post?? Sheesh, tough crowd!

[Z Winged Dangler 2,082]

They should start by just limiting the term. If you can't sign guys for over 10 years, for younger players you're not going to be able to knock down the cap hit with the reduced salary at the end of their career. So hopefully the yearly salary would come down a bit as well.

Otherwise I'm not terribly concerned with how much bank the players make as long as the league is healthy overall (which the owners are about to argue it is not, I'm sure). The significant parts to me are the proportion of the cap each player is taking up no matter the dollar amount, and that the cap is essentially being circumvented by GM's using the long term.

go even further, you can sign a guy max 5 or 6 years. then you don't have ridiculous front loaded contracts for lifetime. make it so the annual cap hit = the amount they make and you can't change yearly amounts. you sign 5 years, 25 mil, you get 5 mil per year period.

[Wing Across The Pond 196]

go even further, you can sign a guy max 5 or 6 years. then you don't have ridiculous front loaded contracts for lifetime. make it so the annual cap hit = the amount they make and you can't change yearly amounts. you sign 5 years, 25 mil, you get 5 mil per year period.

This could work, don't average out the cap hits just make them representative of salary. So front loaded contracts will be $12m year 1.... down to $0.5-1m year 12. That way a lot of teams wouldn't do it because first they'd actually be paying $7.5 when a player is 40/41, or second they'd be blowing $12m of cap space on one player in one season.

[Barrie 900]

They don't need to get rid of hitting, they just need to ban head shots. It's that simple!

[Barrie 900]

The purpose of the salary cap was to encourage parity. It succeeded in this for a few seasons. Now it is ruining the NHL. The cap is giant, and contracts have become absurdly inflated as a result. Teams almost always have the cap space to re-sign their UFAs, so few big-name players ever hit the open market; as a result, those who do go to the open market are given gigantic, ridiculous contracts. What's more, the low-budget teams--those teams to whom the cap was meant to give a legitimate shot at winning--must now dole out ridiculous contracts to remain above the salary floor. Hilarious.

This all needs to be dealt with in the CBA. The cap needs to be fixed or reduced, and contract length needs to be limited. I think that eight years is a decent number, or perhaps less.

Agree 100%!