Salary Cap

The NHL's salary cap is finally starting to realize the effects of the attempts at achieving parity in the league. In the last couple of years, there have been players signed to smaller market teams in order to make the whole league more competitive.

Last year, the largest victim of this parity was the Ottawa Senators. Strangely, the Senators were able to go to the Stanley Cup finals without two superstars, Zdeno Chara and Martin Havlat. The effects of drafting well helped to propel the Sens to a respectible finish.

This year, the largest victim is the Buffalo Sabres. They ended up losing not one, but two, of their captains. The Sabres lost co-captains Daniel Briere and Chris Drury. They will obviously have a difficult time maintaining the success they have had in the past. With that being said, the Sabres were one of the deepest teams in the league and are likely to remain a playoff contender in the Eastern Conference.

The purpose of this post is a reaction to a post I saw on hockeytraderumors.com. On that site, a Sens fan, created a proposal in which teams would be compensated for "drafting well". He felt that it was unjust for teams like Ottawa to lose players like Chara, Havlat, and potentially Heatley, Spezza, Redden and Fisher. Although I understand why he said it, it does not make sense. The idea of the salary cap is SUPPOSED to remove good players from good teams and make them go on bad teams. This creates parity.

Next, the guy's point was flawed in that the players were not even drafted by the Sens, at least, not all of them. His proposal would create a clause whereby the salary hit for a drafted player would be less, say 25% less. In theory, this seems appealing. There is more incentive for a team to retain the services of a quality player they drafted. They could end up saving cap space by keeping their players. However, this is not how to create parity in the league. Teams need to lose players. Teams need to continuously draft well in order to be successful.

Today, the Edmonton Oilers have made a second attempt at acquiring a group II-restricted free agent. The Oilers have now offered Tomas Vanek and Dustin Penner to contracts. Although Vanek re-signed with the Sabres, Dustin Penner was a player the Edmonton Oilers obviously wanted. In the past, under the "old" NHL, the Edmonton Oilers would never be able to consider offering such contracts. In fact, they probably would have never lost Gretzky if the salary cap was in place.

The new system in which "good drafting" teams get "punished" has also allowed for small market teams to be competitive and succeed. Edmonton now has a chance to acquire quality free agents (although few want to stay in Edmonton, but thats another rant). Also, Ottawa wouldn't even be in their current position if the cap was not in place. Large market teams would have outbid for the services of the Senators key personel.

In summary, the Sens fan's post about wanting to retain "quality draft choices" is a bitter response from an uneducated fan. Although I am a proud Sens fan, I cannot simply agree with his logic. It is flawed, biased, and a bitter reaction to something that was supposed to help us. Never bite the hand that feeds you.