radoran Posted May 14, 2019 Share Posted May 14, 2019 Saw this in teh Twitter feeds: http://kuklaskorner.com/hockey/comments/video-the-highest-paid-player-left-in-the-playoffs-makes-8m-does-salary-mea The highest paid player left in the playoffs makes $8M. Which does beg the question if higher salary breeds success on the ice. For example, since signing Toews and Kane to their $10M+ deals, the Blackhawks have two rounds of playoffs and missed the postseason entirely the past two years. The flip side could be that the Caps won the Cup last season with OV making $9.5M - but no one else on the team was above $8M. That said, the eight guys making $10M+ in cap hit last season had zero playoff rounds (McDavid, Toews, Kane, Kopitar, Eichel, Price) and one round (Tavares, Nylander) and the highest paid guy left in the playoffs is Burns at $8M cap hit ($10M salary) at 22nd in the league. After that, you get Tarasenko at 31st and O'Reilly at 33rd ($7.5M each) and only four more guys in the top 50 cap hits (Vlasic, EKane, Rask, Bergeron). Yes, it's a weird postseason this year, but does having a big payroll equal success these days? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 On 5/14/2019 at 9:26 AM, radoran said: Yes, it's a weird postseason this year, but does having a big payroll equal success these days? (Sorry, I only occasionally venture out in the general areas of the forum.) Having a large payroll only means that you have players who have been successful in the past. With a salary cap (my personal hobby horse of hatred towards the NHL) you can't collect enough talented players to separate yourself from the pack, so once you invest heavily in one or two players, you lose the support players who helped get you there. That's what happened to Chicago. They're not a threat any more and they never will be until the Toews/Kane era ends and those salaries come off the books. They were a threat only up until their best players got paid what they were worth. Major rant coming.... A team like Toronto for example, should be able to ice a team in hockey that rivals the New York Yankees in baseball. That would be "fair" if you consider the money and the EYEBALLS that go into the Toronto Maple Leafs product... which is analogous to the Yankees. Some people (me) would argue that if your team has 10x more fans watching, and those fans are paying 10x more money to watch, that they should be rewarded with an excellent product on the field/ice/whatever. Other people will argue that it makes perfect sense for a team like Toronto to be supplying a team like Arizona with both players and money (in the form of revenue sharing and cap limitations) so that Arizona can defeat Toronto. I wouldn't be surprised if Toronto fans contribute more revenue to the Coyotes than fans in Arizona do. So that's my issue. I think hockey needs a luxury tax system. That way success isn't an automatic recipe for future failure. In the NHL, winning teams are already punished enough by losing out on the draft. Now they're punished for winning through the salary cap as well. It doesn't make any sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radoran Posted December 30, 2019 Author Share Posted December 30, 2019 6 hours ago, WordsOfWisdom said: Some people (me) would argue that if your team has 10x more fans watching, and those fans are paying 10x more money to watch, that they should be rewarded with an excellent product on the field/ice/whatever. Teams can be badly managed no matter how much the fans pay. If the fans want to continue to watch, support, and pay for it - that's on them. There are no guarantees in sport. Period. 6 hours ago, WordsOfWisdom said: Other people will argue that it makes perfect sense for a team like Toronto to be supplying a team like Arizona with both players and money (in the form of revenue sharing and cap limitations) so that Arizona can defeat Toronto. Those "other people" include the braintrust behind MLSE... Tronno supported the cap. The concept of hockey in Arizona is that the league as a whole is more valuable if it has a presence across all major markets in North America. I'd be surprised if the value of the Maple Leafs franchise hasn't increased far more than the amount they have given in revenue sharing. And I have numbers - not speculation - to back that up. December 2011 - Maple Leafs $521 million December 2018 - Maple Leafs $1.45 billion That's called an "investment" and it has worked well for the league as a whole. If you think the Leafs paid $929 million in revenue sharing over seven years, I've got a Tower on the Tronno waterfront I could offer you for cheap. The league is making bank on the backs of people who think that there should be some "fairness" involved in how championships are doled out. Why are they changing that business model? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 15 minutes ago, radoran said: Teams can be badly managed no matter how much the fans pay. If the fans want to continue to watch, support, and pay for it - that's on them. There are no guarantees in sport. Period. Those "other people" include the braintrust behind MLSE... Tronno supported the cap. The concept of hockey in Arizona is that the league as a whole is more valuable if it has a presence across all major markets in North America. I'd be surprised if the value of the Maple Leafs franchise hasn't increased far more than the amount they have given in revenue sharing. And I have numbers - not speculation - to back that up. December 2011 - Maple Leafs $521 million December 2018 - Maple Leafs $1.45 billion That's called an "investment" and it has worked well for the league as a whole. If you think the Leafs paid $929 million in revenue sharing over seven years, I've got a Tower on the Tronno waterfront I could offer you for cheap. The league is making bank on the backs of people who think that there should be some "fairness" involved in how championships are doled out. Why are they changing that business model? (A modified advertisement from long time ago, which got pulled for obvious reasons lol.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WordsOfWisdom Posted December 30, 2019 Share Posted December 30, 2019 22 minutes ago, radoran said: December 2011 - Maple Leafs $521 million December 2018 - Maple Leafs $1.45 billion That's called an "investment" and it has worked well for the league as a whole. If you think the Leafs paid $929 million in revenue sharing over seven years, I've got a Tower on the Tronno waterfront I could offer you for cheap. I bet the cost of living in Toronto has gone up by that much too over the same period of time. Here's a question: Do you think a salary cap model would fly in baseball? What do you think Yankees fans would think of a salary cap, and do you think the Yankees would be worth more/less/the same as a franchise in a baseball league that had a cap? (Just food for thought.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jammer2 Posted December 31, 2019 Share Posted December 31, 2019 I'd like to see salary vs late playoffs rounds for a decade to get a much better feel for the issue. One year can be a fluke outlier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radoran Posted December 31, 2019 Author Share Posted December 31, 2019 5 hours ago, WordsOfWisdom said: Here's a question: Do you think a salary cap model would fly in baseball? What do you think Yankees fans would think of a salary cap, and do you think the Yankees would be worth more/less/the same as a franchise in a baseball league that had a cap? The Yankees haven't won a World Series in 10 years. The two most valuable teams in the NHL have won one Cup between them in a combined over 100 years. The most popular league in North America - the NFL - is built upon revenue sharing. Teams like to say they are exclusively in it to win Championships. That's almost never true. It's a business. THE important thing is making money and increasing value. The NHL put in a salary cap, expanded into non-traditional markets, and has never been more popular or more valuable. It seems "the fans" have pretty much spoken on the issue whether you or I agree with them. And quite frankly the league as a whole has proven that spending vast quantities of money doesn't guarantee success. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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