Watching the game last night, and in the first intermission Dave Hodge gets on about how the salary cap is bad for hockey. He had a litany of complaints, including "trades don't happen", "for hockey news all you hear about is cap impact", "millionare players getting sent down to the AHL", amongst others.My favorite? In his gripes about how the salary cap is supposed to save money, he says that the cap "just ends up requiring capologists, who cost money..."
Yeah seriously, when we are talking about owners who want to sign stars to obscene contracts for millions of dollars per year, complaining about having to pay some guy on staff what, $80K to $120K per year is going to be a franchise-breaker?
I think Mr. Hodge is an old-school hockey guy, probably one who resents the fact that modern hockey management includes math that is more complicated than "one goal plus one goal equals... uhm... oh look, the scoreboard has been updated for me. Two goals!"
The bottom line is that the cap is good for the NHL. The last lockout was triggered by the owners who had made commitments for all these high-value contracts and now wanted out of them because the money to pay them just wasn't there. The owners can't be trusted with the health of their franchises. By putting a cap in place that is at least reachable by most of the league's revenues it ensures that the franchise ownership picture is going to be a lot more stable.
Yes there are always going to be teams that can't generate the revenues to reach these levels, but does anyone seriously think that the financial or ownership situations in Nashville or Phoenix would be helped in ANY way by letting the New Jersey Devils pay Kovalchuck $15 million per year? Like... ANY way.
Removing the brakes on player spending will just let stupid owners dig their own holes again. And the complexity in the rules is there to balance flexibility for the real world while simultaneously preventing stupid owners from digging their own holes while circumventing the intent of the cap.
Reducing the trading activity certainly makes the media dig harder for something to talk about, but really, why is having a mostly-static roster bad for the local fans? Besides, Brian Burke's dumping of a third of his roster last year shows that if you are a motivated seller you can still get deals done.
Whether or not the cap is good for hockey is another issue, although without a healthy NHL, this hypothetical hockey would remain nothing more than a fantasy.
Personally I think the cap is good for hockey, in that it prevents teams which have (or think they have) deep financial pockets from assembling high-cost superstar dream teams and dominating the league. Here, everyone has the same starting field and over time this will lead to different teams being good at different times.
The cap even promotes younger talent, as the "middle class" hockey player is the one who is going to get squeezed out. Teams will keep a few high-priced stars, and balance the books with younger, cheaper players. Players who are "better" than the younger ones, but not superstars, will have to be careful when negotiating their contracts as they could price themselves out of a job, especially with hot youngsters with potential development upside waiting to take their place for a fraction of the cost.
But I don't feel sorry even for those players squeezed out or sent down to the AHL. More guys getting a briefer chance means sharing the wealth around. It is a net gain.
So I think that those old guys, the hockey purists, are just going to have to live with the cap. Just like they live with 4-on-4 overtime, the shoot-out, the trapezoid, and all those other non-purist rules that the NHL has.
Keep the cap.
