Darche made a good point using Lecavalier’s contract. Both sides agreed to pay Vinny 10 million dollars next year. No side was under duress, and they both knew what they were getting into. Now the owners want to just magically make 2 million of that disappear?

The owners continue to shoot themselves in the foot by offering crazy amounts of money and term in Free Agency. It is not the players fault that they are getting offered this money. They are being offered this for a reason. You can’t say “well Gomez should have known he wasn’t worth 7 million a year and shouldn’t have taken it”. That doesn’t fly.

This is an issue that needs to be fixed. It’s not exactly the player’s fault but they have to recognize that taking massive contracts, where they have taken far more than market value, is only making the issue worse. They should see that it isn’t helping themselves.

That needs to be resolved someway. Some guideline needs to be put in place that restricts owners from being idiots, and players from getting far more than they are worth.

I think the easiest thing to do is cap contract length and add a new tier of contracts for post-ELC players. Like a 3 year “second” contract. The contract length allows for insurance on contracts to be near guaranteed (only 7 years on a contract is guaranteed), makes for a cut-off date for stupid mistakes like DiPietro (no more 10 plus year idiocies), prevents new UFA’s from being locked up to retirement contracts.

The “2nd contract” or post-ELC contract can be tailor made to give teams contract flexibility, give players that earn big contracts a good sized contract but prevents long term lock-up, giving both teams outs from “potential contracts” that backfire, and players an out from losing earning power by locking up earlier. Teams give up contract length to get control of the salary limit.

Keep RFA status at 7 years, meaning teams still have the option of locking up a player to a max contract (max as in term max) for that final year, or deciding they need to trade that player since he doesn’t plan on staying (what happened with Staal would be a prime example).

It should mean more trades of big star players.

Loving that 3rd line.

Kadri-Colborne-Frattin
Ashton-Aucoin-Abott
Komarov-McKegg-D’Amigo
Ross-Zigomanis-Deschamps/Hamilton
Hamilton/Deschamps

Gardiner-Blacker
Fraser-Holzer
Mikus-Kostka
Gysbers

Scrivens

Also from Kevin Allen of USA Today on a proposed 6 year CBA,
“the NHL proposal calls for a fixed salary cap of $58 million next season and then caps of $60 million and $62 million. Under the plan, the league projected a fourth-year salary cap of $64.2 million, a fifth year at $67.6 million and the final season’s cap of $71.1 million.”