NHL Offseason: Lets Face It, The NHL Needs a Salary Cap

Over the last few weeks I have heard many complaints about the salary cap. Many of these are coming from fans of big-market teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs and Chicago Blackhawks.

The Maple Leafs are the most valuable team in the NHL (estimated at $470 million in 2009), have owners with deep pockets, and avid, knowledgeable fans that have yet to see their team qualify for the playoffs since the NHL Lockout.

Frank Meneses, a Leafs aficionado, wrote this in response to a comment I wrote about the salary cap on my article Fire on Ice: Power Ranking the NHL’s 25 Fastest Skaters [all sic]:

“dont you want to see real fans get rewarded, and (explicit) fans like washingtonians, glendaliens… and other faux fans/fairweather fans not be apparent.

“as a leafs fan, i can truly say the salary cap screwed us over the 2nd most to continue the champinshipless leafers. kerry ‘no eyes’ fraser screwed us over the most.”

I want to see the most passionate fans rewarded. I grew up in Minnesota and although I never got to see the North Stars play—or was too young to remember—I was at the Wild’s inaugural game in 2000 and have been a fan ever since.

Minnesota has some of the greatest hockey fans in the world. We grow up watching children playing pond hockey, adolescents playing bantams, and junior teams with rosters full of potential college stars.

We pack the Excel Energy Center to watch the best high school players in the state compete with one another. The University of Minnesota is one of the most popular teams in the NCAA.

However, sports enthusiasts in Minnesota are taking more interest in the Vikings and Twins, who have become perennial contenders recently, because of the Wild’s recent shortcomings which are a result of poor drafting over the last few years.

A.J. Thelen (12th overall, 2004) never played an NHL game and Benoit Pouliot (Fourth overall, 2005) threw pre-pubescent temper tantrums in the locker room and was traded to Montreal. James Sheppard (Ninth overall, 2006) has shown promise but is at risk of not making the cut next year because of inconsistent play.

Like the Maple Leafs, the Wild is a team that has the fan support necessary to be successful, but has found themselves in the NHL cellar recently.

But instead of blaming the NHL for the team’s shortcomings, I blame a Wild organization that—like any team in small-market Minnesota—needs to put more emphasis on drafting and player development in order to be competitive and has failed to do so.

It’s a franchise’s responsibility to ensure that fans are engaged year in and year out. It is the league’s responsibility to create a level playing field. In the NHL a majority of the teams do a good job of keeping the fans engaged because every team has an opportunity to win.

Genuine hockey fans should blame the front office management of their favorite team, not the salary cap, for their inability to compete in the NHL.

If the Maple Leafs were able to spend without salary cap restrictions they would become the Yankees of hockey, essentially buying their way into the postseason every year.

Some fans, like Mike Vee—who supports the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Yankees—feel that a step in that direction would be good for the NHL. Vee wrote this as a comment on my story NHL: Ten Teams That Took a Step Back in Free Agency [all sic]:

“There is no doubt that in hockey it is extremely difficult to buy a Cup through free agency, unlike baseball (yes I am a Yankee fan). But, they need to do some kind of adjustment to try and keep the cores of teams together.

“Maybe having a tag on a homegrown player (similar to a franchise tag) where that persons salary counts for a minimal amount against the cap might work and possibly having some sort of tier down the roster for players in a similar situation with the cap hit increasing upwards for each player.

“If I was a Blackhawk fan I would be extremely ticked off that the team was dismantled the way it was.”

The Blackhawks reside in Chicago, a major sports market. But due to former owner Bill Wirtz’s ill-advised policy of not allowing games to be played on local television and a century of lackluster play from 1997-2007—the team only qualified for the playoffs once during that time—the franchise has gone bankrupt.

Chicago is desperate to continue to win in order to keep the rejuvenated Hawks enthusiasts in the United Center during regular season games. If next season becomes a fiasco because the team could not retain players like Dustin Byfuglien, Cam Barker, and Antti Niemi—who were all let go to cut salary in order to stay under the cap—the team will stall in its attempt to get out of the red.

A “homegrown tag” would greatly assist the Blackhawks in this case. It would also encourage big-market teams to follow the model of the Blackhawks (and Los Angeles Kings): Building through the draft and adding big-name free agents when the team becomes competitive.

The rejuvenation of the Blackhawks has been good for the league. They are an Original Six team with a rabid fanbase, and the Madhouse on Madison is one of the loudest venues in the NHL. Most importantly, the Hawks, like the Pittsburgh Penguins and Los Angeles Kings, have shown that a once-unpopular team can be successful if managed correctly.

There is little evidence of that in Major League Baseball. The Pittsburgh Pirates and Oakland Athletics both have a rich history and are located in great sports markets. Pittsburgh has one of the nicest ballparks in the league and A’s GM Billy Beane is one of the savviest front-office men in all of sports.

However, both organizations struggle to draw a crowd of 10,000—even the unpopular Atlanta Thrashers and Phoenix Coyotes average more than 10,000 in paid attendance last year—and have become farm teams for big-market clubs like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Los Angeles Angels.

In the NHL, the teams that evaluate talent well, have the best coaching, and spend their money wisely win championships. In MLB, it ultimately boils down to who has the most money (with rare exceptions like the Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals).

The fact is that the NFL, the most popular and best run league of the four major professional sports in America, had a very tight salary cap ($127 cap, $111 floor) that allowed cities like Green Bay and Pittsburgh to establish dynasties to compete with big-market teams like New York and Dallas.

The NHL is built on the NFL economic model, albeit on a smaller scale. The league is designed so that the teams with management that understand the game well and evaluate talent effectively will win, regardless of where they are located.

People in Canada or other traditional markets tend to get upset about warm-weather teams like Tampa Bay and Carolina that have won championships recently and kept a Canadian team from winning a Stanley Cup in the last decade. But both teams were run well during their championship seasons and deserved to win.

Tampa took a major tailspin in 2008, but the Lightning were in the top-10 in attendance three years following the lockout. With the hiring of Steve Yzerman, the team looks to be turning it around and taking advantage it's talent.

Unlike Major League Baseball’s Rays, who cannot draw fans when they are winning, sports enthusiasts in Tampa have gotten behind the Bolts—possibly because they don’t have to worry about their team becoming a farm team for the rest of the league.

Case in point: Carlos Pena and Carl Crawford look to be on their way out of Tampa next year. Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis will probably spend their entire careers with the Lightning. The Rays are a glorified farm team. The Lightning are not.

Carolina is going through a youth movement, but it has created a history of success in the city after going to the Stanley Cup Finals in 2002, winning in 2006, and reaching the conference Finals in 2009.

Ron Francis and Rod Brind’Amour have become household names in the Carolinas. Eric Staal, who is leading the youth movement as captain, soon will join them.

Not only has the emergence of teams like Carolina, Tampa Bay, San Jose, Los Angeles (which has been rejuvenated after the Gretzky years), and Dallas been a great thing for the league that has generated more interest and talent (see: Jonathan Blum, Beau Bennett, etc.), but it also silences people who say, "Nobody cares about hockey in America."

Chicago can win the Cup next year if its younger players fill big roles.

If somebody steps up for San Jose in the clutch, Lord Stanley’s mug is theirs.

If Nathan Horton lives up to his potential, the Bruins could turn Boston in to the city of champions.

Should Stamkos and St. Louis continue to connect, Tampa will be crowned champions.

It has yet to be determined who will hoist the Stanley Cup over their head in 2011. One thing is for certain however—it will be earned, not purchased.