Has the Cap Hurt Hockey? Absolutely
John Saquella | Oct 17, 2010 | Comments 5
In reading the blogosphere this morning, as well as the mainstream media, I see a bit of discussion on the NHL’s salary cap, and if it has helped hockey or not…to me the answer is an unequivocal no.
Lyle Richardson, of Spector’s Hockey, does a very good write up on things this morning. He mentions nationally known pundits and their take on the cap and it’s good and bad points, and whether it’s been good for the game.
The salary cap was sold to fans as a way that small market teams could retain their key players and challenge for the Stanley Cup. The problem is, that before the start of the cap, the only team consistently in the top 5 of spending that consistently won was Detroit. The last post-lockout Stanley Cup Final was between Calgary and Tampa Bay. Since the lockout, the small markets have won 1 Stanley Cup-that being Carolina in 2006.
The other teams that have won? Detroit, Anaheim, Pittsburgh and Chicago. All of whom spent right up to the cap when they won. And all of whom failed to defend their title(except the Blackhawks, so far), in part, because of an exodus of players due to the impact of the salary cap.
Has the cap allowed small market teams to retain players? Ask Buffalo, Edmonton and Nashville fans. As Spector points out, the playing field is no more level now than it was in 2004. The difference is that the Rangers, Flyers, Red Wings and Devils have had to find new ways to creatively circumvent the cap.
Even the low spenders have to get over the cap hurdle. Without Alexei Yashin’s buyout cap hit, the Islanders would be under the minimum salary floor. The system is broken at both ends.
Respected hockey writers Steve Simmons and Dave Hodge point out that the cap punishes successful teams, like Chicago, who had to purge key pieces of their championship team to stay under the salary cap. They note that it’s more difficult to make trades, forced teams and players to walk away from mutually beneficial and happy situations to hit the bricks as free agents. It’s also banished veterans who might be on the downsides of their careers to be stuck playing in the minors or Europe if they wish to continue their professional hockey careers.
Obviously, some of those contracts were dumb ideas. Wade Redden, Sheldon Souray and Christobal Huet were overpaid and would have been had there been no salary cap. But now these guys are forced to play in the AHL or Europe because of big money deals that their employers can’t get rid of because of the impact of the salary cap.
I’m not crying for a guy who makes $6.5mm to ride a bus, but Wade Redden is a better hockey player than an Oskars Bartulis or Shane Hnidy, who hang on to a NHL job because they have small cap hits, not because they’re NHL level players. That waters down the talent in the league and is bad for fans.
Another writer I follow and enjoy, Greg Wyshynski, Yahoo.com’s Puck Daddy feels that the cap is a good thing.
He says it makes hockey a 365 day a year topic. It does, but is the added talk about the league a good thing? Or is it an embarrassment for the NHL like the Kovalchuk circus this summer? Hockey was already a nearly 365 day topic among it’s most ardent fans-August is really the lone month where hockey has little going on, and I’d rather be discussing a trade on August 21st than a ridiculous salary cap situation created because a team is trying to fit it’s star RFA winger under the cap.
Puck Daddy also says that it doesn’t hinder teams from building complete and deep teams. using the Pittsburgh example, he notes that the Pens could have retained Marian Hossa to give Sidney Crosby that long missing stud winger. They would have had to dump vital two way center Jordan Staal to do it, though.
To me, that’s a no win proposition. As much as the Pens would have loved to have a gunner for Sidney to feed, they realized that you need depth at center and PK ability-as well as a guy who always seems to score clutch goals-more than a top winger to play with their superstar center.
The Blackhawks managed to win a title with Hossa, but the aftermath was brutal as 9 popular and key player from the team had to be jettisoned in the summer. How does a fan who waited 49 years for that Stanley Cup parade feel when the speeches that follow it are good byes from guys that were popular and vital?
So, let’s bottom line it. The cap has not helped small market, low revenue teams keep their star players, because of an inability to surround those players with top talent while retaining the star player. The cap forces teams that do win to lose key players the following summer. The cap keeps talented, but overpaid vets, in the AHL or Europe and out of the radar of most casual fans. It hasn’t prevented several teams from bleeding money.
In short, it hasn’t worked. At all. Instead of hockey discussions, I’d guess that 75% of message board chatter deals with the salary cap in some way, shape or form. The fans always have to temper their discussions with, if he fits under the cap. I want to be a hockey fan again, not a guy who has to always keep in the back of his mind that every great play his team’s top young player makes, the closer he is to plying his trade on another team-or the closer he is to forcing a veteran player who has been a fixture for years out the door.
Ask any fan that plunked down $85 to see the Devils dress 15 skaters last week if the cap works. It doesn’t.
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John, you proposed that your readers ask any Nashville fan. Well, I certainly consider myself that, lol.
Absolutely, I consider the cap a success. That said, one must include its necessary counterparts: revenue sharing and cap range.
The primary goal of both, along with escrow, is linkage. Not anything else. It’s pretty obvious, that taken together, the league has achieved their goal in providing cost certainty.
You are semi-correct regarding the cap “punishing” good teams. In a way, that’s what it’s designed to do. A team can no longer spend significantly more than other teams in order to build an “all-star” team. What happens is what everyone saw with Chicago. They were forced to part ways with several good players (their choice in number and quality of players to part with).
The flip side is that revenue sharing enabled Atlanta (and others) to improve their roster by picking up some of those players. Revenue sharing allows Atlanta to field a team with a payroll midway between the cap floor and the midpoint. It benefits up to 15 teams each season in the NHL (including Nashville).
So, one can’t talk about the effectiveness of the cap without talking about revenue sharing and, to a certain degree, cost certainty (linkage).
Now, let’s switch back to Nashville specifically. Prior to this latest CBA, Nashville would field a $20 million roster versus a $60-$80 million roster of the opponent in the playoffs. That’s a pretty tough obstacle to overcome.
Now? Nashville is typically fielding a $46-$48 million roster versus a $56-$59 million roster. Much better odds. In fact, they should have gone back to Nashville with a 3-2 series lead last season against Chicago.
If you discount the personnel changes due to the change of ownership, one really could only make one potential argument of Nashville losing a player they wanted to keep- Dan Hamhuis. Even so, they were correct to not pay $4.5 million for a player that would be at best a #3 defenseman on the Nashville roster.
A couple of final thoughts on the cap.
It was not designed with the goal of every team spending to the cap- far from it. The cap range is in place to ensure cost certainty with a secondary goal of keeping team payrolls in the same ballpark of each other.
One benefit of the cap that’s only just starting to be seen is the driving down of player salaries. Goalies really experienced that this past off season.
While there are ways to improve things for teams across the league in the next CBA, this past CBA was largely very successful.
Thanks John.
My point is that the cap has not helped the sport overall. There are certain ways in which it has benefited smaller markets. However, even that is mitigated
Using your example of Dan Hamhuis and Nashville, not being able to pay a number 3 defenseman keeps that team from being a real contender. Has Nashville managed to dramatically improve itself? Looking at it’s roster it is what it always has been-a good team, tough to play against that will fall to a deeper team in the playoffs.
Now, weighing that against the Chicago situation-Nashville has a small, but passionate fan base. Chicago has a huge market that was literally screwed for decades by Dollar Bill Wirtz. They build themselves up, start to reach out and rewin that massive fanbase, and win the Stanley Cup, only to see almost half the roster be dealt because of a salary cap.
I want 30 teams trying to win the Stanley Cup, not 8 teams with a realistic shot, and 22 pieces of cannon fodder. Teams should not be punished for trying to improve and be better.
The most telling sign that the cap doesn’t work is that neither side of the collective bargaining process seems ecstatic about keeping it in it’s present form. The NHL Board supposedly wants the cap dropped and the escrow raised. The NHLPA hates the escrow.
I know this sounds condescending and selfish, but I’m a few beers into it-I lost a season of seeing my team play because other cities didn’t support their team financially as well as mine does. It brought in a cap system that doubly punishes a team like the one I root for.
By trying to win the Stanley Cup every year, they spend a lot on players. Every year, they have to juggle to maintain the team they built and nurtured. Every year, because they make the playoffs and managed a few deep runs in the past four or five years, they’ve been stuck picking around number 20-25 in each round of the draft, making it harder to replenish when they lose a guy because of the cap.
What David Poile and Barry Trotz do, year in and out is remarkable. Making a team with severe limits financially a yearly playoff team is simply fantastic. It’s a shame more of the folks in Nashville-especially the corporate ones-haven’t taken notice.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest a better alternative-a luxury tax system that is far more punative than the one used by MLB. Let teams spend over the threshold to retain guys who are fan favorites, like Byfuglin was in Chicago, but make it painful to do so.
Then use the luxury tax money to augment the revenue sharing plan, drop the ridiculous 3 year and you’re out system they use now and admit that some of the relocations and expansion sites were bad ideas driven by the immediacy of a cashier’s check for the expansion fees.
To bottom line it, I think it hurts the sport and league more to have the big markets and teams that win titles having to reload every year so that Nashville, Phoenix and others can be farm teams for the Detroits, Philadelphias and New Yorks and encourage teams to go for broke in trying to win.
John, I don’t consider the Predators “cannon fodder” for 8 teams with a realistic shot. It’s tough to say that when they had the Stanley Cup champions very near to elimination last season- and probably gave them the hardest run in the playoffs.
If the Predators spent to the cap, I’d still not want them to pay a #3 defenseman $4.5 million a year. That’s just not good use of the team’s money. Letting Dan Hamhuis walk doesn’t put Nashville in the “farm team” category to me.
It’ll be fine with me if they pay Shea Weber somewhere around $6 – $7 million (which will happen, likely prior to end of the calendar year). Suter will likely get just shy of that next season. If they get paid, but Nashville still maintains their budget, does that make Nashville a “farm team”? Again, outside of maybe Dan Hamhuis (and ignoring the forced sell-off by Leipold), I’ve not seen one instance where Nashville traded/let a player walk that they really wanted back.
I really don’t consider the teams spending right up to the cap to be working with too much of an advantage over Nashville. It’s not like it has helped Philly, Vancouver, San Jose, New York Rangers etc. win a Cup recently. They’ve had more success in the playoffs for sure (with the exception of the Rangers)- but that’s more about matchups and health than personnel budgets (to me).
For example, the 05-06 Predators squad was third in the League going into playoffs, but had injuries to Zidlicky, Erat, Vokoun, and others that would severely hurt any team and they lost to a very hot San Jose team. If both rosters were fully healthy, Nashville’s was better (in my opinion) even though it cost less.
Luxury tax systems can work, but they have their flaws too. The biggest one with the League is that there is no cost certainty with a luxury tax system. Luxury tax systems essentially encourage inflation of player salaries. While the cap seemed to allow that growth as well, it was really just due to the fact of the initial cap being so low. Now that the cap has stabilized, we are seeing the true affect of cost certainty.
All this debate going into the next CBA about whether the cap has worked or not misses because they don’t consider the only measurable that matters- cost certainty. I guarantee you that whatever comes out of the negotiations for the next CBA will include cost certainty.
As Fred has pointed out, there are ways to get around some aspects of the cap- options only the major markets can really afford. None of those really shift the balance overmuch to me though.
For the record, there’s only one Western Conference team that I think Nashville might have significant trouble defeating in this season’s playoffs- Vancouver. And the more I look at that defense the less I think they are the favorite. (Provided Weber, Suter and Rinne are healthy for the playoffs.)
It comes down to whether you favor a MLB-type system where there truly are a few number of teams that can win or an NFL-style system where most every team can build a winner. I favor the latter (which I understand that we’ll agree to disagree upon).
It’s hard to argue that a luxury tax system is better for the NHL from a revenue and success standpoint when their current system is closer to the most successful professional sports league in the world in the NFL (by far).
Thanks John, and Fred.
Nice blog John. The salary cap has its advantages and disadvantages as both of you pointed out. But the NHL GMs have found ways to circumvent the cap as I wrote here -> http://hockeyindependent.com/blog/slasher98/23942/ that were not used prior to the current CBA. Contracts buried in the minors, dressing 15 skaters, loaning a player to Europe, etc. The NHL will have to clarify some of the articles in the next CBA or these kinds of problems will continue to hamper the league overall health.