Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
That seems like a slightly different argument than worrying about paying Kuznetsov and Farabee. Of course I'm not convinced he is the best player in the league three years from now.
But I was commenting on your claim that teams fail because they overpay top talent. In general, top talent seems to win whether it's a cap system or not. More teams fail because they don't have any top talent.
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I never even mentioned Farabee, so I don't know why he's relevant. I'm commenting on 20% of cap. And the effect of a whole bunch of guys hitting RFA at about the same time.
Teams that win tend to have top talent, that's true. But often they did it before they have to pay them top dollar (Chicago with Kane and Toews on ELCs and decent RFA deals and not after they got paid top dollar) or when the rest of the team hadn't caught up to demand higher pay (Colorado with Mackinnon on a cheap deal, Makar on an ELC and before they had to deal with Rantanen). Florida won with elite guys on pretty reasonable deals. $10M for Barkov.
Teams haven't won that often AFTER they shelled out league max salaries to their top guys. Minnie hasn't yet with Kaprizov. And when Hughes comes up in 2 years we'll see what happens. Toronto hasn't with the salaries they are paying Matthews and Nylander. TB won with Kucherov but there's a big asterix on that one as far as cap percentage goes.
That's why RFA salaries were a good deal before - it gave teams a chance with elite talent but before they got the top salaries. Offering an RFA maximum NHL salary might be good if you have a lot of other players on good deals. The problem comes, IMO, when you start out with the max salary and then face a bunch of guys who also want a lot.
EDIT: maybe the point is that teams have typically been successful with (a) elite talent that (b) became elite before they had to pay them the commensurate salary.