Instead of just dropping the salary to 50%, keep the hard cap is still 57%, but after a team hits 50% of the revenue, there is a 100% luxury tax that goes to the low-revenue teams. Then use the following 10 things to cut spending and increase revenue.
1. Raise the UFA age to 31 for the bottom quarter of salaries, 32 for the next, 33 for the next and 34 for the top quarter of salaries. This allows teams to keep their draftees very late into their careers, and prevents crazy contracts to UFAs in their prime.
2. Eliminate rookie UFA options until the age of 24. If you don't sign after college or juniors, you are an RFA unless you are willing to sit out and not play your first pro game until you turn 24 years old. This would prevent situations like Schultz and Erixon, and make draft picks more valuable.
3. After the ELC is over, the second contract is also 3 years maximum, with double the ECL as the salary limit. Again, this makes draft picks that much more valuable.
4. For the third and subsequent contracts, the maximum number of contract years is 6 (with the salary limit of 20% of the soft cap).
5. Cap hit is based on the highest year. This would ensure that contracts are substantially the same every year.
6. Create an annual buyout at 50% of the salary which would carry over a 50% of the cap hit. This would allow teams to get out from terrible contracts.
7. Make it possible to re-negotiate a lower contract midway through the contract is the player and the team agree.
8. AHL/ECHL contracts count towards the cap at the same rate at which the players are actually being paid. This prevents burying of contracts like Redden.
9. A first rounder will go as compensation for every full or partial million in cap hit. This means that if a player's cap hit is, for instance, $4.25, the compensation is 5 first rounders.
10. Add a "Wild Card" best-of-three round for 7-10 seeds. This keeps more teams in contention, while giving the top teams more of an advantage because they will be facing more tired lower squads. Having this extra round creates some extra revenue for the NHL.
I voted "I mostly dislike it" after I read no. 5. Now that I'm done, I dislike everything about it.
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"Trust me I'm an expert, I watched 13 rangers games on NHL center Ice this year through streaming." -Starburst
"I don't even understand what the point of all this arguing is. Are you guys hoping that the other side is going to have an epiphany and go 'Oh, OH! You're right, we ARE going to lose this series!'" -Crease
If it doesn't benefit us, it's not worth it. I don't give a rat's ass about small market teams. I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. Point is, the FA market and FA period in general is a big advantage to a big, attractable market like NY which gives us an advantage over every other team. Rangers first and only first.
Number 7 will make that garbage that goes on in the NFL happen.
Players will hold out only when they are doing better than how everyone expected of them. But when they play poorly, teams can't hold out on a player and say, "You know what? I won't pay you unless you take a pay cut because you suck and we thought you would be better when we signed you."
So what's the point in the end? You don't want the players to get a lesser share of the revenue yet you seriously cut their income by vastly increasing the UFA age, limiting the salary on 2nd contracts and decreasing the cap by including AHL players. I guarantee you the NHLPA would rather agree to a 50% share than those rules.
I absolutely hate most of those proposals. UFA status delayed until your mid-30s? That's insane.
The owners and GMs can't help themselves. They piss and moan about competitive balance and cost certainty and then do everything they can to **** themselves in the ass.
After the last CBA was signed , everyone said the players were *****. In the end, the players got a good deal. Why? Because management types are always trying to skirt the rules and gain an advantage. What did SBOB once say? Like handing teenagers whiskey and car keys? They always **** things up.
The players make the game great. Stop coming after them because the morons in NHL front offices can't control themselves.
