It made for a lot of missed hockey for a flawed model. Without meaningful revenue sharing, it is bound to fail eventually and will make for more missed hockey down the road.
The bottom line is that implementing a cap that is affordable by the average team means the average revenue teams do fine, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. The poor teams, which are largely made up of teams in large TV markets without much care for hockey have been kept alive by regional sports networks raking in carriage fees while no one is watching the games. That model has 5 years left at best before it collapses spectacularly. Once that happens, there will be several franchises in trouble and that will lead to more work stoppages.
The cap has been decent for on ice parity, but but is a model built with little foresight for long term financial parity. Since becoming commissioner, Bettman has little interest or competence in winning anything but short term tactical battles at the expense of the long term health of the league, franchises and the on-ice product.
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