Quote:
Originally Posted by FiveSeven
Imagine having 2 superstars and one leaves because you can only pay one a huge amount, then your 2nd best player just leaves to sign with Columbus or some #### because of it.
Terrible idea on many fronts.
|
That's not what this is.
There seems to be a lot of focus on the 12.5M I capped it at in the example I provided, but it's not about getting to pay someone 12.5M. You can already do that, and some teams (EDM) will have to do that (or more) for more than one player.
The focus shouldn't be on the 12.5. That's just a way to still tie that one salary to the cap without making it part of the cap. Using Johnny and Tkachuck as an example (and pretending that signing them was an option), we could have given them both 8x10M contracts, and been able to have one of those contracts not count towards our overall upper limit.
In my thinking, capping the Franchise tag at 15% of the upper limit just protects the small market teams from having to worry about Toronto and NYR offering someone 20M a year without any worry about cap hit.
I mean, I'm pretty sure I don't completely understand the entire economics of whole thing (I'm not even sure if it's the micro or macro that I'm not getting lol). I'm just thinking top-tier salaries are escalating to a point where... I mean...
The league already has 8 players making 11M or more (Marner is very close to being a 12th player, at 10.9). With an 83.5M upper limit, paying someone even 10M only leaves an average of 3.31M per player for the other 22 roster spots. Even if you're somehow able to cap your 4th line at 5M (~1.6 per player) and 3rd line at 7.5M (~2.5 per), that's now 22.5M just for one player and your bottom 6 (which is impossible, since every team has a bad contract or two in the bottom 6).
So... 83.5 - 22.5 is 61M for two first line players, three second line players, top D pair, middle D pair, bottom D pair, starting goalie, backup goalie, and a couple spares.
With everything outside the top 3 in the draft every year being a crap shoot, I just can't see a way to viably build a team that can win a Cup without getting a lottery pick (or two) along the way.
I would argue that it's more probable for a team to win a draft lottery and get a Matthews, McDavid, Stamkos, Kane, Crosby, Ovechkin, MAF, etc, than it would be to be able to trade for a Tkachuk. That was just looking at 1st overalls, there are plenty more that were second and third overall picks.
The last team to win a Cup without a player that was drafted in the top 3 was Detroit in 2008, and even then the team they beat in the Finals was Pittsburgh - a team with two #1s and a #2 - and they won the Cup the next year. Even this season, every team in the final 4 has a player that was drafted in the top 3.
So, I guess the point I'm making is that we're competing in a league that requires building through the draft, but also has teams in cities with vast differences in quality of lifestyle, forcing certain markets to pay higher salaries than others in order to retain their drafted players... A 24 year old Tkachuk will play in Florida for 8x9.5, while we have to pay a 29 year old Huberdeau 8x10.5.
My argument is that if every team was allowed to float one contract away from the cap, but that contract in and of itself was still tied numerically to the cap, then it's more of a benefit to small market teams that have to overpay than it is to the teams that players will take a cut to play for.
Again though, I completely accept that I don't fully understand the economics behind everything I'm suggesting. Also, as it stands right now, the current CBA has a 20% cap how much an individual player's annual salary can be (at the time of signing the contract). I don't know if that impacts this idea or not... like it seems to me the 15% Franchise tag wouldn't be used for a McDavid if he can get 20% without that tag.