Quote:
Originally Posted by Cole436
I don’t think the amount of money they make should affect their ability to have some control of their lives. They’re all people who work for a corporation and should have the right to negotiate these clauses in their contracts, especially when billionaires are profiting off of them.
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The whole point of the salary cap was to try and level the playing field across all markets (desirable and un-desirable), or crazy wealthy owner to just slightly wealthy owner to increase competition and give each team a closer chance to winning, vs. the have's and have nots that emerged in the late 90's early 00's.
I'd say for the most part, it has vastly improved that situation, and as much flack as Betman gets here up north, it's the only reason small market Canadian clubs managed to survive and re-emerge (Winnipeg) in the NHL.
And as much as I'd like to see all advantages other destinations might have over a small market get eroded away, I agree that you can't block off everything AND I agree that if a player is able to negotiate some control into where they play into the contract they should be able to do so. Players leave money on the table in exchange for their NTCs and NMCs, and if that's something they value they should be able to keep it.
I get it, along with many small market clubs, Calgary is often on those NTCs, but we still manage to bring in some good talent via trade and we also take advantage of lower costs by giving them out to some of our better talent as well. Too much of a win for the players to try and take that away from them (plus if the league did, we'd just see way more trade demands and hold outs. I'd rather not trade for a player to come here in the first place, than trade for them and have them demand a trade out right away).
What I'd love for them to figure out is a way to level the tax playing field. It's likely not possible at all given tax laws etc.. and even if it was, it would 100% impact revenue, but the Florida / Nevada tax advantage bugs me way more than NMC and NTCs.