NHL Puts End to Long-Term Contract Solution Still Not Enough

The NHL and NHLPA have hammered out an interesting deal. In exchange for Ilya Kovalchuk's contract, along with all previous contracts such as Marian Hossa's being accepted the NHLPA has agreed to amend the CBA.

The new rules state that if a player is older than 40 years old when a long-term (five years or longer) contract expires, the player's average salary until he is 40 is the cap hit until he is 40. After that, the salary he gets every year is the cap hit.

The second thing they said is that before the player turns 40 if he gets paid less than a million dollars in any year in a long term contract it will count as one million dollars. However, this will not apply retroactively to any current contracts such as Kovalchuk, Henrik Zetterberg, or anyone else signed long term.

So what is the problem I have? The main problem for me is that it does not count retroactively. I understand this is a concession given by the NHL as part of the negotiations, but that does not mean it is fair. If these deals must end, they have to apply it to everyone the same way, regardless of when they signed their contract. Now this opens up a floodgate when the next CBA is negotiated.

Since the precedent has been set that you can waive rules for players if they signed a contract before a certain date, the new CBA can have a clause where teams that signed a player as part of the old CBA only has to follow the rules of the old CBA, not the new one. That is a scary thought. 

The next issue I have is that it does give a huge advantage for teams that signed these long-term deals already. They get to circumvent the salary cap in exchange for other teams not being allowed to circumvent the cap?! That is like rewarding someone for cheating, and in exchange their opponents cannot cheat. How crazy is that?

Then we have the Kovalchuk contract. Why is that accepted if the NHL already made an example by rejecting a similar contract? This should not be accepted, even if the older contracts like Hossa's are. 

I have come up with solutions to these issues in the past. One of them was to make the salary of the current year the cap hit. I also admitted the NHLPA will not allow this so we should be prepared to make it the average of the next five years. In any event, this gives teams that have attempted to circumvent the salary cap an unfair advantage. The only exception I see is Chris Pronger. 

In fact, Pronger's debacle helps me come up with another solution. Instead of contracts signed after you are 35 counting against the cap until the contract expires, whether or not you retire, why not make it so that it would count if the contract takes you beyond 35? This seems more logical because it should not matter when you sign the contract but when it expires. Otherwise the circumvention may still be attempted.

In conclusion I like the amendments to the CBA. I just don't like the fact that it will not be put into effect retroactively to contracts like Hossa's.