Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
I think the contract illustrates perfectly the Canadian disadvantage...
Ignoring the 'does he want to sign here or not' debate (because that is an individual thing), the bottom line is that if he had signed in Calgary, it would have probably been for something more like 8 X $7.75M. Or in other words, about 5% more.
That may not sound like much, but if you have to add 5% on to all of your mature contracts, that will equate to a few million, which means one less good player.
Or conversely, it means that you have to focus more on younger players, and move more of them out as they mature.
Either way, your team is disadvantaged with respect to icing a contender.
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This part is absolutely true and means the Canadian teams, or at least the small market ones will need to be better in a lot of areas to compensate for that. Better drafting and development, and a smaller margin for error bad contracts. Can’t have dead cap, need to overpay by just the right amount. The Nurse contract for the oilers is a great example of this. It’s high by probably $2.5-3 mm, which is a killer because of the other issues you quote.
It’s been 30 plus years since a Canadian team won, and there’s a reason for that.