What do you consider a fair CBA?

[55fan 5,133]

Imagine that the Lady of the Lake stopped chucking swords and instead began bestowing hockey sticks.

You, after your typical night of drunken skinnydipping, have found yourself in possession of the Magical Sword of Commishionerhood. It is now up to you to decree a fair CBA without repressing either side.

What would you consider to be fair and reasonable to both the players and the owners?

Personally, I think that the teams are competitive enough that they will blow out their wallets to get the best players available. Those that aren't willing won't win. I don't think that the underpayment of players will be a problem in the future, given the contracts that are out there serving as a benchmark.

On the other hand, the contracts won't get too big as long as the owners are the ones signing the checks. If they don't like paying out so much, they can... not pay out so much. No one is forcing them to pay the players massive contracts, stupid contracts, or any contracts that they might have to hide later.

In a nutshell? Free enterprise.

That said, I do think that there needs to be an RFA period so that teams don't get outbidden for their drafted talent. I think that age 27 is sufficient. I'm not a big fan of offer sheets, but I wouldn't get rid of them. They can liven up a dull summer.

Oh, yes... and let the boys go to the Olympics.

[dirtydangles 1,328]

I think the RFA years should last only until 25. People are forced to play out a better portion of their career on a team and city that they may not be in love with. And if you don't like it then you can just be shelved long term (you don't have to be traded) whereas in the normal workforce you can quit and look for new work.

I think there SHOULD be a limit on contract lengths. If you break down the average player's career there is an ideal max length of around 5 years.

18-23: gives GMs 2 RFA years to hammer out a new contract for an additional 5 years.

24-29: prime years for fwds.

30-35: veteran contributor fwd. dman in prime.

36-41: twilight of career.

If you consider the general scheme of player development and contribution, it makes sense to have contracts max out at around 5 years. This way you don't get players in the twilight of their career being paid to play as a prime fwd. Then you don't have stupid situations where teams can't compete years down the road due to a stupid contract given out by a previous GM years ago that cap strapped the team (and could cause them to dip into revenue sharing).

There should be a soft cap of +2mill on the ceiling that allows for teams to have some wiggle room in re-signing their talent (however twice this amount must be paid into revenue sharing) and you cannot use the soft cap in 3 consecutive years.

35+ contracts should be dealt with on a case by case basis. There should be a vote among GMs as to whether or not a team should pay for a player's cap hit depending on the contract situation. Say you signed a 35 year old to a 2 year contract in good faith and he was levelled by Chara and had a career ending concussion. That team shouldn't have to pay the cap hit for those 2 years as the contract was reasonable and the injury was not likely caused by his age. However if a team signs a 35 year old with a history of knee problems to a 5 year deal and he has set backs and cannot play anymore, the team should have known better and would be responsible for the risk they took when attempting to acquire that player. This is a system where GMs will keep each other honest and prevents GMs from using contract length to outbid other GMs.

Owners and players should split the revenue 50/50 and call it even for good. You can't have hockey without one or the other. It sucks, but this should just be dealt with now so that this doesn't happen again.

[Guest Crymson]

Six-year cap on contract length, $12m reduction in cap, stipulations for limits in cap increases per season. And 1% of all NHL profits go directly to me.

[Echolalia 2,961]

Six-year cap on contract length, $12m reduction in cap, stipulations for limits in cap increases per season. And 1% of all NHL profits go directly to me.

Seconded as long as you help your ol buddy Echolalia pay for school.

Let's start a National Hockey League Fans' Union

[dirtydangles 1,328]

Six-year cap on contract length, $12m reduction in cap, stipulations for limits in cap increases per season. And 1% of all NHL profits go directly to me.

Bettman is that you?

[haroldsnepsts 4,826]

As I had posted in the lockout thread.

1) reduce player revenue from 57% to 52%

2) seven year contract limits (6 seems reasonable too)

3) 28 years old, 7 years in the NHL for UFA status

4) keep entry level contracts 3 years

5) keep salary arbitration

But more than any cap reduction they need to deal with revenue sharing. Funny how when it comes to players salaries it's a simple percentage but revenue sharing among franchises is more convoluted than the tax code with all sorts of exemptions, special conditions, and loopholes.

Any amount they reduce players salary, they should add double that percentage to revenue sharing among teams. Players salaries are not nearly as big of an issue as the financial disparity between the franchises.

And I'd love for there to be some way these idiots don't get to roll back the huge contracts they handed out this offseason while simultaneously crying about players making too much money.

[frankgrimes 1,836]

My stance:

- revenue is increasing

- players are risking their health and sacrifice a lot for the game we all love

- dwarf doesn't do any of that so

So things I'd consider fair:

- eliminate the hard cap

- lower the salary floor

- UFA = 6 years

- RFA = 5 years

- ELC = 3 years

- get rid off revenue sharing, if some teams can't compete with revenue sharing what is the whole point of it? Might as well get rid off it and just let every owner decide if they want to spend or not but don't cry foul if you won't get the top UFAs for playing it cheap. Owning an NHL team is a big privilegue, so either be in it to win it or go out.

- fire the dwarf probably the most important point of the whole CBA consideration

- fix the draft (no more 3 first overall in a row)

- keep the revenue split like it is 57/43 sounds good to me

- remove NMC/NTC minimum age

[Z Winged Dangler 2,082]

Seconded as long as you help your ol buddy Echolalia pay for school.

Let's start a National Hockey League Fans' Union

The NHL-FU

[Z Winged Dangler 2,082]

1. UFA age should be 25

2. Max player salary $9mil and max years of 6.

3. Remove the instigator rule

4. Players 50%, owners 50%...50/50 always seems fair.

5. Agree with Frankgrimes, can revenue sharing. Support your own team and spend to what part of the cap you can afford. The Wings, Rangers, Leafs, Bruins etc should be able to spend up to 5% over the cap if they're paying other teams salaries...which brings me to...

6. Teams that can afford to can pay up to 5% over the cap, matching the % they go over the cap to a fund of the NHLPA/NHL's choice, be it a charity to buy underpriveleged kids equipment or to do concussion research.

7. I don't care if no one at all agrees with this one, change the equipment. Get rid of the armor that keeps ending careers with headshots. Have league approved equipment that is made for the changes in the game. Keith Primeau was apparently working on an equipment line that used the material to make crocks as the padding for shoulder pads and such. The players, weist up should be using materials that are less impactful when they hit a player, especially in the head.

8. No more front loading contracts. You sign a guy for 5 years, 25 mil, then he gets 5 mil per year end of story.

[Jesusberg 1,256]

1) Whatever it takes to let me start watching hockey on October 11th.

2) The End.

[cusimano_brothers 1,655]

A fair CBA doesn't start with the declaration of a lockout. The concept of "collective bargaining" is totally foreign to Uncle Gary's thinking process.

[Z Winged Dangler 2,082]

1) Whatever it takes to let me start watching hockey on October 11th.

2) The End.

And then I won't have to wait longer than usual to get my roster update in NHL 13

Regardless, I'm taking the week off when it comes out as per usual cause i'm awesome!

On another side note as i'm more or less off topic, i feel bad for any guys who are gearing up for their rookie season, which includes Nyquist, Smith and Brunner i guess could be lumped in there as he's new to the NHL (hopefully NHL).

I wish the sides negotiating had that mindset. And realistically, if I was the Commissioner, I would set a mandate for the NHL and NHLPA to have their CBA proposals on the table to start negotiations the day the season starts in the last year of the deal, so this should have been drafted in 2011. I would not want to be the only commissioner in sports history to have 3 lockouts in my tenure.

3 LOCKOUTS! unacceptable!

[haroldsnepsts 4,826]

3 LOCKOUTS! unacceptable!

This, we already lost a season of a still prime 35 year old Lidstrom. Are we potentially about to lose a season where Dats is 34 and Z is 31?

They're going to have to put an asterisk by total stats for players whose career fell under Bettman's reign because they lost a season and a half (and counting) of hockey and had to suffer through a decade of clutch and grab before the league did anything about it.

[Guest Crymson]

If this lockout occurs, it'll be the players who are to blame. The system is out of control right now. The cap is too high, and this makes teams almost always able to retain their pending UFAs; and if those UFAs decide to hit the open market, the overly-high cap allows other teams to issue ludicrous contract offers. This, combined with the lack of a cap on contract length, leads to those offers often being of ridiculous length, which in turn means that even fewer star UFAs will hit the market in the future; said stars will have been locked up forever. More, the cap is so high that it has made a mockery of the cap's entire purpose: parity. Yes, the purpose of the salary cap, that which caused the season-long lockout, is, as things stand, is not at all being fulfilled. Low-budget teams cannot hope to compete in spending with the bigger-market teams; even worse, some have trouble reaching the salary floor.

This is all evident, and it all must be addressed. And it'll be the NHLPA that will stand in the way of the changes.

[Barrie 900]

Take a good hard look at the other 3 leagues and see how they deal with things because I think this hard cap and floor is complete failure! The NHL says they link the cap to revenue, but they don't have proper revenue sharing, which is why so many teams are broke. The big markets are controlling what the small markets spend and have to sit on their profits because of the hard cap.

Small markets need to be able to base their team salaries on what they bring in and not what the entire league does. A Luxury Tax would allow the big markets to spend the money they have to sit on now, plus they can share revenues better with the small markets. Small markets can base their team salary on what they bring in, and how much they collect in revenue sharing.

Honestly if things continue as they are, I have better things to do than watch a League that allows a 6 vs. 8 seed final. There's other sports that know how to run things that I can watch instead of the Gary Bettman Show. To lockout the players because they don't know how to share renues properly is insane! Luxury Tax works well in other sports. There's a reason why the NHL always has CBA problems.

[Barrie 900]

If this lockout occurs, it'll be the players who are to blame. The system is out of control right now. The cap is too high, and this makes teams almost always able to retain their pending UFAs; and if those UFAs decide to hit the open market, the overly-high cap allows other teams to issue ludicrous contract offers. This, combined with the lack of a cap on contract length, leads to those offers often being of ridiculous length, which in turn means that even fewer star UFAs will hit the market in the future; said stars will have been locked up forever. More, the cap is so high that it has made a mockery of the cap's entire purpose: parity. Yes, the purpose of the salary cap, that which caused the season-long lockout, is, as things stand, is not at all being fulfilled. Low-budget teams cannot hope to compete in spending with the bigger-market teams; even worse, some have trouble reaching the salary floor.

This is all evident, and it all must be addressed. And it'll be the NHLPA that will stand in the way of the changes.

Everything you've mentioned you can blame the owners for, not the players. As I said earlier, there isn't proper revenue sharing right now. There's a bigger gap now between the rich and poor now than before the lockout. The owners put this plan in place, which clearly has huge flaws.

[frankgrimes 1,836]

If this lockout occurs, it'll be the players who are to blame. The system is out of control right now. The cap is too high, and this makes teams almost always able to retain their pending UFAs; and if those UFAs decide to hit the open market, the overly-high cap allows other teams to issue ludicrous contract offers. This, combined with the lack of a cap on contract length, leads to those offers often being of ridiculous length, which in turn means that even fewer star UFAs will hit the market in the future; said stars will have been locked up forever. More, the cap is so high that it has made a mockery of the cap's entire purpose: parity. Yes, the purpose of the salary cap, that which caused the season-long lockout, is, as things stand, is not at all being fulfilled. Low-budget teams cannot hope to compete in spending with the bigger-market teams; even worse, some have trouble reaching the salary floor.

This is all evident, and it all must be addressed. And it'll be the NHLPA that will stand in the way of the changes.

Are the players holding a gun on the owners saying "100 million contract or you are toast?" nope, the owners are flying with their not so cheap jets, helicopters and luxury cars to the players mansion presenting them with such contracts. Players would be stupid not to sign them you can be damn sure I would. Nobody is forcing the smaller markets to spend to the cap, if they even cant survive with revenue sharing fold them, simple as that having a record breaking league with fewer teams will be more beneficial longterm.

Why do teams like Montreal, Toronto and Detroit have to pay for the dwarfs failures? Doesn't make sense to me oh and please some of the smaller markets can hand out 100 million $ + contracts so they aren't as poor as you might think.

Another lockout this time will be blamed on the owners thats for sure and I highly doubt the NHL would recover from that. 3 lockouts are unacceptable dwarf needs to be canned even the players are making fun of him now.

<3 Prust's statement :-)

[dirtydangles 1,328]

it blows my mind how bettman still has a job. literally nobody likes him and he brings heat to everyone who supports him. he doesn't give a bag of pucks what product ends up on the ice as long as there is money in the owner's pockets. this is like a bailout where banks survive by taking away a large portion of all their clients money.

[haroldsnepsts 4,826]

If this lockout occurs, it'll be the players who are to blame. The system is out of control right now. The cap is too high, and this makes teams almost always able to retain their pending UFAs; and if those UFAs decide to hit the open market, the overly-high cap allows other teams to issue ludicrous contract offers. This, combined with the lack of a cap on contract length, leads to those offers often being of ridiculous length, which in turn means that even fewer star UFAs will hit the market in the future; said stars will have been locked up forever. More, the cap is so high that it has made a mockery of the cap's entire purpose: parity. Yes, the purpose of the salary cap, that which caused the season-long lockout, is, as things stand, is not at all being fulfilled. Low-budget teams cannot hope to compete in spending with the bigger-market teams; even worse, some have trouble reaching the salary floor.

This is all evident, and it all must be addressed. And it'll be the NHLPA that will stand in the way of the changes.

Wow, and I was the one getting grief for jumping to conclusions.

I agree with many of your points but don't see how it follows that it's the players fault. The biggest issue right now is the disparity between the rich and poor teams. Lowering the cap and adjusting contract length does not do enough to address the fundamental issue of the large gap between rich and poor franchises. If they really want to fix that problem, it's got to involve more revenue sharing between teams.

But that's obviously a harder sell for Bettman. Given the choice between taking money from players and having to give up some of their own money, it's pretty easy to see what the owners will push for, even if it's ultimately not the best solution for the NHL.

[Guest Crymson]

it blows my mind how bettman still has a job. literally nobody likes him and he brings heat to everyone who supports him. he doesn't give a bag of pucks what product ends up on the ice as long as there is money in the owner's pockets. this is like a bailout where banks survive by taking away a large portion of all their clients money.

The owners like him. That's why he has his job.

[dirtydangles 1,328]

The owners like him. That's why he has his job.

what will happen is that fans will start hating the owners on the whole, especially if they reject a very fair offer from the nhlpa. then they just look greedy and will be vilified by the media and fans.

Edited August 14, 2012 by dirtydangles

[Z Winged Dangler 2,082]

what will happen is that fans will start hating the owners on the whole, especially if they reject a very fair offer from the nhlpa. then they just look greedy and will be vilified by the media and fans.

I agree with this for the most part. The thing I'm wondering is what is the rest of the NHLPA's proposal? They put the side dishes in the article. What's in the meat and potatoes? Guess we'll find out in a few days when the NHL states in full what they do and don't like from the players standpoint. But in general, it seems the players are trying to meet half way and taking a more mature stance than the initial proposal from the NHL. It was kind of like Sacha Baren Cohen wrote the NHL's proposal. Wasn't the NHL's proposal one of his speeches in the Dictator?

Just make sure the games start on schedule and i get my roster update for NHL13 in a timely manner for a change. Not too much to ask for.

[Yzerman191 37]

Maybe this has been mentioned already, but I personally don't see the need for a limit on contract length. If they want to address the issue of circumventing the salary cap by adding on additional years at the end of the contract, just change the rules going forward to make the cap hit for each year be that of the player's salary for that year. That would end the signing bonuses and the cap circumvention, but would still allow players to sign lifelong contracts for the sake of security.

[Guest irishock]

Contract length limits are an absolute MUST. I hated these 10 year deals when they were first introduced. Zetterberg and Franzen are on the books until what, 2020?

[Z Winged Dangler 2,082]

Contract length limits are an absolute MUST. I hated these 10 year deals when they were first introduced. Zetterberg and Franzen are on the books until what, 2020?

At least Z is still gonna be worth his salary by the end of it. Dude competes.

Maybe this has been mentioned already, but I personally don't see the need for a limit on contract length. If they want to address the issue of circumventing the salary cap by adding on additional years at the end of the contract, just change the rules going forward to make the cap hit for each year be that of the player's salary for that year. That would end the signing bonuses and the cap circumvention, but would still allow players to sign lifelong contracts for the sake of security.

Making it so the cap hit is their actual salary and gettting rid of signing bonuses and front loading could probably get rid of the lifetime contracts. GM's may be more hesitant to dish them out. I still think there should be a 6-7 year max though.