Should there be a salary cap in the NHL?

Question

What's the point? All it does is keep franchises barely afloat that shouldn't have hockey teams or that have tight-*** owners. And in exchange teams can no longer have star players. They can have one, sure, two at max, but with the salaries they can't have an incredible team like the Habs of the 70's or the Oilers of the 80's. What's the point of drafting and 'growing' a player if he can just vamoose to greener pastures when he turns 27?

I've sorta answered my question already, but I just needed to vent. What do you guys think?

Answer 1

At first, I was all for it... now I'm sorta iffy...

I'd hate to see smaller Hockey cities fold... but only the strong should survive, in order to have a prosperous competitive league... I say 24-26 teams is enough..

Should the Rangers or Leafs feel sorry for Edmonton or Buffalo because they can't afford to keep their players?

Should teams like RedWings or Leafs have to handcuff themselves because they happen to have the sort of money that can possibly buy a winner...

why should the lowwest spending teams have the same chance in winning the cup as the highest spenders??

Answer 2

I utterly disagreed with the whole salary cap premise from the start. Now that they've done it, however, I am coming around. The league has never had such parity, and it is much more fair than it used to be. I'm not 100% sold yet, but a lot of what they predicted would happen has.

That said, you make excellent points about a team's ability to grow their team. Ultimately, your problem is not REALLY with the cap, though. It is with the early unrestricted free agent rule that was part of the compromise to get this cap on the record. It is also with expansion. The cap does not CAUSE teams to lose young free agents. It does not CAUSE teams to not have enough stars. Salary cap or not, teams could lose their young players if 27 remains the age that a player can go wherever they want to. Salary cap or not, the truth is that there are only so many stars to go around. If some team has all the stars, then another team will not. How is that fair? The only major difference now is that all teams have an equal footing. The only people who are not going to like that are the ones whose teams took advantage of the old system.

I am in agreement with you on the low age limit for entering free agency. It is too low and it DOES hurt a team's ability to keep their home-grown talent, but it was the price of parity. The inability for a team to get stars, however, has little to do with the cap. That problem has been becoming a reality more and more since the league over-expanded in the 90s. Very few teams were able to maintain a lot of stars on their team even then. Notice that both of your examples were from the 70s and 80s, not the 90s or right before the cap.

My assumption is that you are a fan of one of the teams that benefitted from the old system, as was I (I'm a Wings fan). Well, teams like mine may have had it made back then, but it was at the expense of other teams, and not JUST teams that were "barely afloat." Montreal and Edmonton both, the teams you list as an examples, were suffering from a lack of stars the past 20 years because the old money-grubbing system was so unfair. A lack of stars due to expansion made it worse, as there are now 30 teams vying for a handful of the best players, instead of 24 in the 80s and 12 as far back as the late 60s and early 70s.

So like I said, I'm starting to come around on the salary cap thing. That said, there is still work to be done to increase the talent pool and make it easier for a team to develop. I think you are right to complain!

Answer 3

well there is a salary cap in the NHL and its at $44 MILLION right now. the salary cap was at $38 million last year and since the NHL made lots of money last year the salary cap went up to 44 million for this year and the cap will keep rising if the NHL keeps making more money. the reason the cap is in cause teams like the Ducks, Sharks, Coyotes, Panthers, Hurricanes, Bluejackets, Predators can make some money cause in the old system this teams were losing millions each year yes the Ducks that's why Walt Disney sold the team. i know players really shouldn't be worth 8 million a season but allot of players such as a Tie Domi that was making just over $2 million a year that's what was hurting this game players that cant play and making millions. you look at J.P Dumont that was playing with the Sabres wanted over $3 million and this is from a player that had one season at 54 points and the rest of his career averaged 30 points season that's not a player worth $3 million, now hes with the Preds. but its not only the players fault its also the owners that would pay these crazy salary's for players that don't deserve it what so ever.


heck you look at baseball the Montreal Expos where the best team in 1994 season with a team salary of about 18 million a season to your Yankees 170 million. and the Expos got cheated out of a World series cause of the STRIKE, they where the top team that year in the MLB. Yankees salary today per season is about $250 million a year. but it goes to show you that hockey is a true sport of Champions cause you can't simply buy a Stanley cup like you can in other sports look at the NY Rangers trying to buy Stanley cup's year after year and couldnt even make the playoffs most of those years plus also having the highest pay role in the NHL.


GO HABS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Answer 4

I think with the league at 30 teams there needs to be one. With the talent pool that diluted there are only a handful of teams (NYRangers, Detroit, Philly, Toronto, etc.) that have income levels high enough to be able to accumulate the most talented players. In the old un-capped NHL you didn't have to evaluate talent...just go out and buy the guys who were the best the previous year. Look at Bobby Clarke in Philly as an example. When it came time to evaluate talent and not just buy it, he was a flop.

As for your argument of drafting and growing a player only to have hime leave....that's exactly what happened before. Teams like Buffalo, who for years were at the top of the NHL in terms of quality of minor league prospects, just couldn't afford those players when they got older. And suggesting that Buffalo (or Hartford, or Winnipeg, or Quebec City) shouldn't have a team is just silly when the option is moving that franchise to Phoenix, or Miami, or Kansas City.

As much as Bettman doesn't want to admit it, hockey is a regional sport. Are there southern cities that are exceptions to the rule? Of course there are. But the NHL of the early '90s was on the cusp of eclipsing basketball as the #3 sport in the US and forced expansion has ruined that.

If the league was reduced back to 21 (or 24) teams you would accomplish 2 things. First, the moderately talented player (the player the trap was created for) would no longer exist in the league. Each team would be able to have a better caliber of player, top-to-bottom, and the quality of overall play would improve. Second, you could eliminate the salary cap because now it gets back to being a strong evaluator of talent.

I guess there's really no short answer.

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After reading a few more answers below, I felt the need to come back and edit mine.

"why should the lowwest spending teams have the same chance in winning the cup as the highest spenders??"

Well, they shouldn't, but there shouldn't be any team located in any city that can't compete. The alternative is to let the 8 largest markets form their own league. That's just silly. This is the reason a salary cap is beneficial, it evens the playing field (somewhat) and that makes the whole league better.

The teams in the big revenue markets still have an advantage. They can build new rinks, put in state-of-the-art training facilities, offer possibilities for players to make add'l money via appearances, etc. Cities like Montreal and Toronto have advantages because of their historic importance to the game.

The point is, a salary cap lets the league operate as a larger stronger unit, instead of 30 smaller units constantly in competition.

Answer 5

Well, besides the obvious in helping owners control costs, you get some parity in the league.

Look at the Sabres this year. It makes franchises have to compete rather than have the best players gravitate towards the teams that have either been great historically or the teams with the deepest pockets. (like the Red Wings).

And dynasties in sports really no longer have the power of bringing fans together or bringing more fans to the game. Even without dynasties, when TV had better national coverage, you'd think the only teams in the league were the Rangers, Devils, Red Wings, and Avs, Stars, and Flyers. Nobody cared. Yzerman's teams were great. Scott Stevens teams were great, too. But everyone's home team's games are all televised, so you can watch them instead of being force fed the same teams on the national telecasts.

Answer 6

Yes I think there needs to be a salary cap but there also needs to be a salary floor as well. A minimum amount that owners must spend so that they can not simply pay the minimum to everyone on the team and still collect off of the collective pool. A salary cap lets all teams compete and lets the Canadian teams have a chance against the American dollar. Salary caps actually tend to force players to stay with one team much longer because they know they wont be able to get much if anything more on the free agent market than from their home team. I will agree that it prevents dynasties that are store bought but the Patriots did a pretty damn good job in the NFL with the salary cap.

Answer 7

Of course, while its not good because it prevents frachises from assembling seemingly untouchable teams, like the Oulers of the 80's, its good because it prevents franchises from assembling seemingly untouchable teams. If you look back a couple of years before the lock out, there are some lines that could easily have been lines in an all-star game on one team, and there still are, but at least its not so wide-spread now. When there was no cap certain teams (cough the rangers and the leafs cough) would go out and snatch up big name players because they were big markets with the money to afford them, throwing off other teams chances at being able to win (sometimes this worked out like for the leafs, sometimes it didn't like for the rangers). Now each team has as a good a chance as each other if they are able to get the players they need.
The other thing you need to remember is the economic part of a salary cap. The league is saving team owners from themselves by preventing them from spending a ton of money they don't have which could lead to the folding of a team which would ultimately hurt the league.

Answer 8

The salary cap is in place so the same 6 teams don't continually win the Stanley Cup every year! It's a great idea to have one, as there SHOULD be a cap in all sports.

You need some proof? Just look how competitive the league is this year! It's the tightest race for the playoffs that I've seen in a long time. I don't know about you, but I enjoy watching games with a playoff atmosphere in late Jaunary and February! Every game matters now, and they never used to.

I keep hearing the argument about "hockey players dont make as much as football and baseball players boohoo"! Who cares if they don't make as much as other sports?!? Are any of you telling me that you wouldn't take 2 to 3 million a year to play as sport as your job? Those guys are lucky, and I think that most of them know that!

Answer 9

Cap? Yes.

It keeps the economics in line and prevents idiots like Karmanos from offering Fedorov a $50MM contract and forcing the Wings to match it when Karmanos had no intention of actually honoring the contract. The Cap keeps the players salaries maxed (one player cannot receive more than 20% of the cap number each year) and is good for the game.

Answer 10

You mention players leaving when they turn 27, thats "free agency", not "salary cap". Should there be a salary cap? Yes, it keeps the salaries in line without them going out of sight as they started to do before the salary cap. Without a salary cap it would be like baseball where only a few of the same wealthy teams year after year would have the best players making the playoffs.