My issue is that everyone knew the Pirates couldn’t spend big money so there was little to no public pressure on ownership to do anything differently or more importantly sell to better ownership.

Penguin ownership actually tried to acquire the Pirates over 18 months ago and offered the current owners more than the team was worth by about 25 million dollars. However, Pirate ownership knew they had enough talent to possibly compete and were happy with the money they were recieving in revenue sharing. Therefore they would not sell.

As a Pittsburgh native who knows Penguin Ownership would have spent more to make the team competitve almost two years ago, this is incredibly frustrating after 19 years.

The Pirates and Royals are horrible for baseball, not because of their cities or fans, but because their owners didn’t care, they’ve been willing (especially the Pirates) to keep a low payroll and spend little money while collecting revenue sharing a turning profits. Meanwhile look at small markets in Oakland, Tampa, Minnesota, St Louis, and now Washington who have all done a great job of developing young players and had success of various degrees in the last decade.

No group of fans should have to sit through 19 straight years of losing and still continue to support their team because teams like the Yankees and Red Sox can out spend a smaller market team by 4 or 5 times.

I’m not saying the Yankees and Red Sox are wrong or evil because I am fully aware they are completely in their rights to spend whatever they want to win. BUT, a salary cap is part of the reason the NFL is so successful. Even if small market teams have bad ownership a salary cap at least gives them an opportunity to try and compete with the big market teams.

-QG

Either the owners share more money amongst themselves or (re)move the leeches of the NHL. This isn’t an owner-vs-player battle because they both need each other, and neither of them will get anywhere on their own. A house divided will not stand; we saw that 8 years ago already.

Excellent Post! I can tell you that my teams owner is going to want games to be played, with the Suter and Parise bump. He is going to have to pay for those salaries somehow. I am confident larger heads will prevail and a deal will get done.

The NHL is going to argue half of the teams lost money because player costs are too high, cap circumvention is occuring, and small market teams are struggling to retain players because larger market teams have more money to lure them away.

Aaaaaand the players are going to argue that the league generated record revenues and that in a free market system players should have plenty of flexibility to shop their services because NHL careers have no guarentees.

Yada yada yada…..etc…etc.

Let’s eliminate the obvious issues.

1.) Teams shouldn’t be able to circumvent the cap. Term limits are trivial. If a player wants to play for less than the market will bear, that’s his choice. But, disparity from year to year in salary over the life of a contract shouldn’t vary more than 25%.

2.) Arbitration is neccessary if RFA exists. If teams don’t want to deal with arbitration then eliminate RFA. At the end of any deal (entry level included) guys become UFA.

3.) Extend entry level deals. Small market teams need to be able to hold onto elite talent. But pay players better in their entry level years if they produce. No player should feel used by the system because he is too good.

4.) Just split the Revenues 50/50 and lets move on. Under the current system with the mid point being 8 million dollars under the cap as usual, it brings the salary cap to 62.6 million. Only 7 teams need to get under that and only 2 teams need to get to the floor of 46.6.

If I can understand how to create a reasonable cap from going here: http://m.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/nhl-salary-cap-to-be-temporarily-set-at-703-million/article2449267/?service=mobile
YOU SHOULD TOO!

Spend the next two months arguing over the specifics all you want but don’t deprive me or anyone else of the sport we love come October because both sides are trying to milk a system THAT’S MAKING EVERYONE MONEY DURING A RECESSION!

With all of that being said I’m really starting to think baseball has the best model for hockey, let teams spend with they want but put a luxury tax in there that penalizes them for spending too much, with that money going to the lesser teams. Yes the Yankees and Red Sox overspend and sign a lot of players but they don’t win every year, middle of the road teams are always in the mix, just look at San Fran and St Louis winning the past two years.

The union will never accept anything close to this. How can they? The league spends all their time boasting about revenue, then they turn around and offer this garbage? It’s the height of stupidity and arrogance. And is this how the league will operate going forward? Roll salaries back and lose a season every time the CBA expires?