Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
Way too easy to blame the agents for skyrocketing RFA salaries. I agree with Winter on his point that no one is forcing these teams to allocate their money this way. The NHL has a long history of being unable to manage their business very well, and we have the lockouts to show for it.
|
The agents advise (push) their clients to pursue significantly escalating contract numbers. This is very understandable because, if there is no hard cap, it serves to push total salaries up, ever escalating at a rate faster than inflation. Which serves agents well.
However, in a hard cap, salaries can only escalate at the rate that revenues escalate. So when agents push for ever-increasing numbers for the stars, all they do is screw up the pay scale for everyone else.
In this scenario, the agents are doing a disservice to the players. And the agents hate it because they can't grow their own revenues beyond the rate that league revenues are growing.
Agents also fuel union dissent by blaming escrow for the woes of the system. But escrow isn't the problem, it is the fix.