[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

The tax issue is overblown, as the pay is taxed based on where you're playing the games. So 50% of your games are in your low tax home jurisdiction but 50% are spread out elsewhere. Factoring that in we're not talking about massive differences in tax rates. Taking a crude measure that half of your games are played at the average NHL tax rate, there's only a 7% difference between the best and worst tax jurisdictions. Sure, we'd all take a 7% raise, but there's way more important factors in play for athletes than a 7% raise, many of which are out of their control. We're only talking UFAs and NMCs here. There's only a 3% difference between the worst tax jurisdictions and the average NHL tax rate. Players in the best tax jurisdictions do 4% better than the average NHL tax rate.

The worst tax jurisdictions are California, Ontario, Quebec, and New York (the Rangers specifically due to Manhattan municipal tax). I haven't heard about teams in those jurisdictions having a problem attracting talent, except Ottawa but they're just cheap generally. While only LA of the teams in those areas has won cups in recent memory, the really low tax jurisdictions (Arizona, Nevada, Dallas, Florida, Colorado, Tennessee) haven't done much better. TBL is a huge outlier but I don't think anyone is suggesting they won their cups because of a tax advantage. Florida is in the same state and has been largely horrifically bad for 30 years.

Alberta is actually right in the middle, tax-wise. Our problems in not winning championships do not stem from our tax rate.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that is exactly right. At least in the US, I think they would pay home state tax (if there is one) on their whole salary, but do get charged a "jock tax" of 3% of the portion considered earned in the visiting state.