If this new hockey league can have a 15 million cap and the NHL average star salary 10 years ago was 5-6 million, I see no reason why they can’t cut it off now. Players are getting too greedy and teams are getting to despirate to buy a championship.

Baseball is out of hand and Football is ran perfectly. Make the NHL like the NFL now before we have another Yankee team in hockey and no one want’s to watch.

Hockey would be much more exciting if any team can win a stanley cup instead of expecting the Red Wings, Avalance, Flyers, Blues, and Stars in the playoffs every year. I’m sick of teams like the Rangers and Maple Leafs diging into their pockets to out do everyone.

Right now I would love to see a semi-hard cap enforced just to see what some teams would do.

End it now enforce a cap and make Hockey a sport to watch instead of striking and running a risk of lossing any fan base that is left. If the strike ends without cap in effect they might as well quit playing hockey all together because no one wants to watch another Baseball season in effect.

By the way, A Luxury Tax didn’t work for baseball why the hell would it work for Hockey. The same damn teams are in the playoffs every damn year.

The NHLPA is saying they will never take a cap, while the NHL is saying that they have to have a cap

So one of these sides is going to give in soon or later and so far it looks like both are pretty stubborn.

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1. Create a multi leveled cap system. Have the lowest level be something like 35 mil. teams that fall below this not only are not taxed, but get a larger percentage of the lux tax money. The next level could be say 40 or so mil, these teams get a smaller portion of the lux tax, but they also are not taxed. between say 40 and 50 mil teams are taxed, and taxed at a high rate, say 2 to 3 bucks for every dollar over 40 mil spent. and 50 mil is the hard cap. any team that breaks 50 mil has to start cutting players.

this brings me to point 2.

nfl style contract setup. no more guareented contracts. Players can be cut at any time. But depending on when they are cut they are owed different amounts of their total contract value. A player is cut before training camp and he is owed less than if he was cut during the regular season.

Also whatever money the player is owed counts towards the cap.

3. cut out the joe thornton clause from rookie contracts.

4. Allow teams to place one players contract outside of the salary cap.

5. lower the age of unrestricted free agency, but allow teams to designate one player per season as a franchise player thus keeping their exclusive rights one year past UFA.

I think the more realistic way to go would be a luxury tax, but one with teeth in it. Tax kicks in at $40 – $45 million or so. Tax rate is 40% – 50%. That way, it affects the large market teams as much as it does the small market teams. Or, even make it sliding scale. Start the rate at 20% – 25%, and increase it by 5% every $10 million over a team goes.

Just as an example, the Red Wings started 2003-04 with a payroll of $77.8 million. That would but them $32 million over the limit of $45 million. At 40%, they’d dole out $12.8 million to the league. As big as Detroit’s fan base is, that’s still a tough amount of cabbage to swallow. Even with a Cup final run, they’d still be hard pressed to cover that cheque.

But that’s not going to hurt teams like the Red Wings who still uncover amazing gems late in the draft and haven’t had first rounders in the past couple of seasons anyway.

I think that a Soft Cap with a luxury Tax is going to be the result..with the Larry Bird Rule..

But that’s not going to hurt teams like the Red Wings who still uncover amazing gems late in the draft and haven’t had first rounders in the past couple of seasons anyway.

I think that a Soft Cap with a luxury Tax is going to be the result..with the Larry Bird Rule..

You are with Jagr, and he is known for goals. So give him a small base salary, and incentives for certain goals, like Jagrs purpose is points.

Then you have Sandy McCarthy. For every hit you record, or the plus minus plateau, or even 1-3 goals, 4-7, 8+….

Holik being a checking center would be based on plus minus too. Its complex, but so is the modern day economy, and having a business. That is what college, and higher levels of education prepare us for.