We lost a whole year of hockey to get a salary cap in the NHL. A sore point to many bitter fans that have the proverbial hate on for one Gary Bettman. The common argument being why did we lose a year of hockey, to get a cap in place and team salaries are higher then ever. In short those arguing this are suggesting that the cap system the owners so badly wanted didn’t work. That couldn’t be more wrong as far as I am concerned. First off the cap is tied to league revenue. That in itself is really what the owners wanted, or they wouldn’t have settled on a cap that moves up or down every year. They weren’t concerned about having one fixed number and walking away, they just wanted a system that said total salaries paid to players couldn’t be more then what the owners themselves where able to make. The guys cutting the cheques want to make some money too!! Go figure. I get that. I believe the players get that as well. Coming out of the lockout it seemed to be a clear win just for the Owners, they broke the mighty union! Turns out the current CBA in the NHL seems to be pretty damn good for everyone involved. Of course that is when the NHL is making money that is, it will be interesting to see what happens if the Canadian dollar drops back to 75 cents, revenue sharing drys up, and the cap drops sharply. Panic!!!! Another topic for another day though I suppose, as I have one other train of thought that seems to be a more regular occurrence the longer we go into the cap era in the NHL.
Two things to paint where I’m trying to go with this.
1. Players signing with the KHL. Now I realize that the NHL is still not losing the young high end talent to the KHL just yet, I’d even bet they never will, but the fact that Evgeni Nabokov and Pavel Demitra are now in the KHL does say something. These guys are higher end players that still have 3-5 years of really decent play left in them in my opinion.
2. Kovalchuk couldn’t print his own contract. Imagine his shock when he found out that not only did he have his choice of teams, but the teams that did have interest had no intentions of paying him the way he had initially demanded.
The point?
The money is drying up. It’s taken 5 full season of NHL play under the cap system, but the big spenders in the NHL have committed their money. Many of the other teams with cap space left, run under self imposed budgets, or are rebuilding and thus have no interest in tying up 85 million on one player. The result in the long run here could be exactly what many NHL fans wanted to see. Players that aren’t worth the money they think they are, not getting the money, for the simple fact it isn’t there anymore. It also means that smaller markets, which traditionally do have money to spend, might now become options for bigger ticket players that may not have considered them just a few years prior.
Not a guarantee, but a situation I’ll be watching wioth interest as the seasons roll by here in the future.
Then again, this is just another damned opinion.
