Does anyone feel the Salary Cap has made teams more even strength and what team has it helped most?

Question

Ronnie- I agree with you to an extent about players going to nice cities, but if that's the case why do so many good players come to Detroit? I mean there's only like one block in the city aside from cork town that people hang out on. The economy sucks, the weather is like Canada's . Michigan is beautiful, but I imagine so are other places.Sure we have a great team...but so did Buffalo last year.

Answer 1

How is the salary cap related to even strength play? I thought the new rules make for too much power play time.

The team the cap has helped the most is probably the Oilers. They can when all they want about last season but no way Pronger or Peca go to Edmonton the year before if no cap. Plus now they can actually offer $50 million to Vanek (albeit Buffy matched)...so despite Lowe whining about the Smyth and Nylander situations, the Oilers are far better off under the cap system than they were before when guys like Coffey, Messier, Gretz...even thru Guerin and Weight all left Edm.

Answer 2

The whole point of the salary cap is to even out the strength of teams, so they don't end up like the yankees and Tampa Bay devil rays in baseball, so I hope that it has made the teams even. I have to say that I like it, because even though it eliminates those extreme contracts, it also can be a give the league a good balance, if the cap is high enough, if it is too low, then it just takes all the fun away, because teams won't be able to afford more than a few good players. I think that the smaller city teams, like nashville, and others have really flourished under the cap, but teams with big markets are just help back.

Answer 3

Yes it has. The real issue becomes the skills of the General Manager to build a team under those parameters now. The lack of a cap was a major issue for Canadian teams and a team like Pittsburgh in fielding a competitive team because they just didn't make enough money to go out and get their skilled players. The playing field is now balanced.

The cap is not going up too quickly. The cap is based on the previous season's earnings so unless they take a huge step backwards in a given season, they are simply distributing what they made. There is a goofy equation in the CBA to determine the cap and distributions. Buffalo put itself into a position where it couldn't afford all of it's skilled players and I believe screwed up by not signing any of them. They could have signed 1 or 2 of the guys they lost. Same applies to the Islanders.

Answer 4

At first the salary cap was very helpful, and I would know because I am a Buffalo fan. We are a small-market team, and we couldn't compete with teams like the Leafs and the Rangers. However, now that the cap is increasing, we are facing the same problem. We don't bring in the amount of money like other teams do, and therefore we can spend as much as other teams do. If the cap continues to increase, look forward to another lockout :\

Answer 5

Like other people said, the cap is going up too quickly. The reason that the teams more even strength is that there is now a minimum salary cap, which force the low market teams to spend money(they can't just use 15 rookies because their total salary will be too low). This causes the salary gap between the highest paying team and lowest paying to decrease from 68M-25M to 55M-35M (the numbers may not be exactly right, I am pulling it out of my head from watching HNIC(cbc) or to the point(the score) a couple of months ago).

Of course the new cap help the Hurricanes the most, they won the cup because of it. They added Doug Weight, who in the old days other teams like the Wings would have been in the mix to trade for him but not because of the cap.

Answer 6

The cap prevents teams from stacking talent. Colorado, New York (Rangers), and Toronto, and Detroit would all just buy players and keep smaller markets from competing with them.

Of course for Toronto and NYR it didn't work too well at times.

I think it's been great for the game and will help keep the balance between teams. Sadly this means no more dynasties but at least you can go worst to first faster.

The teams it helped the most: The Canadian teams who's revenue is in Canadian dollars and their expenses are in American dollars (and they were getting screwed by the exchange rate).

Answer 7

I think the cap has most assisted the small market Canadian teams. Admittedly, Calgary went to the finals the year previous to the strike, and Ottawa had been good for some time now, but the cap has allowed these teams to keep the talent they had rather than simply being farm teams for the larger markets.

Not so sure it is helping the small market southern US teams, though, as they simply don't get enough fan support to justify spending up to the limit.

Answer 8

I did at first, but obviously the cap is going up too fast. Look what is happening to teams like Buffalo that was supposed to be helped by the cap. They were one of the most competitive teams in the league for a couple of years, and then the financial giants wiped them out, just like in the "old" days. In a salary cap world, there is no way in heck that a team like the Rangers should be able to buy up two of the three best available free agents in one summer. Teams like Edmonton and Montreal have to scrape and fight to get players. Teams like Detroit (who is my favorite team), Colorado, and Philadelphia just help themselves to whatever they want. Nothing has changed.

Answer 9

Salary cap did balance things out to soe extent but teams still don't have to go all the way to the cap. Buffalo and Ottawa woould top my list. Both were near bankrupcy before the cap.

Answer 10

well putting in a salary cap is supposed to help the smaller market teams like buffalo phenoix carolina chicago columbus and others so yes i do think that the salary cap has helped made teams more even stength i think that it has helped the Smaller market team because otherwise they wouldnt be able to afford some of the players that they have for example Buffalo wouldnt be able to afford Vanek