[News] NHLPA uses escalator. Salary cap will be $73 million next season

[Husky]

Salaries are in usd. Add 30%

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

You know, when you put it this way, it really does make Subban's $10MM donation to the Montreal Children's Hospital that much more impressive.

He basically gave away 2 entire years of after tax salary. Not a lot of people would do that. As rich as Subban or not.

Not that it wasn't an exceptionally generous donation and something more athletes should be doing, but it doesn't really work that way. Most of the $10M is made up of funds from his foundation and other fundraising efforts that he's involved in on the Children's Hospital's behalf. And the amount that he does personally donate (I believe that was in the $1M range) is tax deductible so the government covers about half of it through tax deductions.

Again though, that doesn't take away from how generous his pledge was. Not to mention, his participation in fundraising could easily provide more benefit to the hospital than a straight cash donation would anyway. Subban's involvement has the potential to greatly increase the donor base, many of whom might become repeat donors who can have a long lasting effect well beyond what a one time pledge would provide.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

Every year since the cap came in, the teams overspent in the aggregate. Not once, IIRC, have the players got all the escrow money back.

They definitely got it all back and more in 2006. They received about a 4% bonus to bring them up to the full players' share because the first year of the cap was set using a low estimate for revenue that season.

It's hard to find exact numbers, and I haven't seen figures for the last couple of seasons, but the last time I looked into it, the largest final escrow holdback was in the 08/09 season, when the players received 87.12% of their contracted salaries, when all was said and done. In most years, the final number has been above 90%, and often the high 90s (2010-11 was 97.7%, for example).

[Resolute 14]

They got it all back in 2007-08 as well. But I am pretty sure they haven't been underpaid since..

[mrkajz44]

When talking about take home salaries, I assume anyone who even brings up escrow has no idea how it works.

That cap increase is only 2% or so? Seems like a pretty small increase to me, and doesn't really make a ton of extra wiggle room for those up against the cap.

[GGG]

It seems crazy that players vote for the escalator each year. The only people that benefit from it are the tier 1 free agents. The rest fight for the scraps of the cap and because of the escalator anyone signed loses money.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by GGG

The only people that benefit from it are the tier 1 free agents.

All signed players live under a higher threat of buy-out (or in dollar terms a 33%-66% pay cut depending on age) in a flat or declining cap. From their perspective it's probably better to get the money flowing now and worry about the clawback later.

Really though... NHL team managers (collectively) are horrible at their jobs. The actual cap is 63.5M (the 73M is the ceiling)... last year (when the cap would have been slightly smaller) 24 teams exceeded that number while only 6 were under. That's a really messed up distribution curve. The NHL ought to install a luxery tax on teams that exceed the true cap (and conditionally send the proceeds to teams that are below it).

[Resolute 14]

Uhh, no. The 'true cap' is that $73 million ceiling. The midpoint of the salary range is not itself a cap.

[powderjunkie]

^Exactly. Everyone understands the terms of the deal going in - no one is hard done by when they don't receive the 'full value' of their contract.