Part 1 Salary Cap

Now that the lockout is official, we will have at least a few months without hockey, and most of us don’t know exactly why. In the next few weeks, I will go over the pros and cons of each proposed system starting with the salary cap and the readers can draw their own conclusions from an educated point of view.

So what have we been hearing for years? The players make too much, people can't afford to go to a game anymore, owners are losing money hand over fist. The players are claiming a salary cap is too restrictive. Really? Do you believe that? If you do, consider this. The best run and most highly profitable league in the world is the National Football League. They have the most restrictive cap out of the four major sports but everyone, and I mean everyone, makes money. No teams are in danger of moving, every team and fan has hope for the coming season, there isn’t a lot of bandwagon jumping here, etc. Bottom line is, many good things going on in football including this little tidbit. Ever since the cap has been implemented the average NFL salary has increased by half a million dollars over the past five years. I would say that’s not too bad. Still not convinced? National Basketball Association also has a salary cap and while the success isn’t the same as the NFL, everyone makes money and the average salary has increased here over five years by $750 000. In both cases, salaries are tied to revenues and both leagues pay their players around 60% of the total league revenue. Therefore, it’s a partnership and it is in the best interests of both players and owners to always put the best product out there every night. So why is it that the NHL can't do this? There are 6 teams that will fold for sure if this system doesn’t come into effect. That’s 150 jobs at an average salary of 1.8 million...that’s a lot of money to throw away. If it was the high tech industry, a mine, a mill, any business and it was losing that much money, cuts would be made without problem and it would be very easy to justify. In a roundabout way, the NHL is trying to save jobs and with the history of increased average salaries, why wouldn’t any union embrace that?

Now for the negative parts of the salary cap. It becomes very hard to keep a team together for a substantial length of time if you are a championship team. Your salary demands wouldn’t fit under a cap and it becomes strictly a business decision. Loyalty becomes a secondary issue as other teams get into a situation where they can offer much more money per year. You can’t make too many bad decisions or you could be stuck with those decisions for a long while and may not have room under a cap for several years when you are trying to improve. From a fan's point of view, there can be a lot of no names on the team. There may be 5 stars that stay their whole career but, in the NFL's case, about 25 that shuffle in and out of town, average turnover being about 2 years. The only other problem here, and it may not even be one, is that players may have to take less then what they are worth to either go to a winning team, prolong their careers or stay in a city they like. They don’t get market value but they still have the choice of where to go. That’s it for now. Its a fairly restrictive system but it provides for a healthier league where both players and owners make money and the fans still have a financial say.