Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan02
Indeed the reason there is so much parity now is the league is the opposite of watered down. Even the worst team in the league has a couple potential super stars.
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There is no connection between parity in the league and watering down the product. The league has parity, but not because there is oodles of superstar talent for everyone.
The salary cap makes it impossible for a few rich teams to hog most of the star players. The salary floor makes it impossible for the poor teams to cheap out by hiring no star players at all. So the talent is spread around fairly evenly. This remains true whether the overall level of talent is high or low.
If you doubled the size of the league to 60 teams tomorrow (and voided the existing player contracts), the cap system would still ensure a fair amount of parity. A player like Crosby would command so much money in a 60-team market, the team that eventually signed him would have to fill out most of its roster with scrubs and AHLers. A team that refused to use scrubs or AHLers wouldn’t have enough money to sign any major stars.