Todd, with all due respect man, how many times did Bettman say his goal was to bring “parity” to the league?  That was not-so disguised lingo for stopping dynasties and allowing more teams to have a legitimate shot at the cup.  The Wings had a salary of more than $80 million the year before the cap, the highest in the league.  We were Bettman’s main target.

Locking down operating costs is a big part of business, granted.  But Bettman didn’t lock the game out for a year just so teams could be aware of what their salary commitments are.  It wasn’t a fun exercise in transparency.  He did it so all teams would have similar and relatively low salary figures as a way to promote parity in the league.

Posted by John from Pittsburgh, PA (Wings fan for life!) on 04/12/09 at 02:09 PM ET

Fixed overhead…period.

All businesses, everywhere, put their own spin on their efforts.  Bettmans no different.  He didn’t sell parity to the owners, just operating costs.  The owners are not dummies, and would not alllow him to shut them down for a year for parity.

As far as his parity spin on the Cap….total failure.

Any parity that exists today is engineered by scheduling and officiating.

Posted by HockeyTownTodd on 04/12/09 at 03:29 PM ET

A question for the cap savvy.  The cap number is based on the average across the contract, but in actuality what the Wings will be paying out next year will be way over the limit. 

So what happens down the road when the cap number in 2015 is still a 4 million hit for Franzen, but they want to buy him out, and he really only has a couple million left in his contract? 

How does that affect the cap number with the buyout? 

This whole question might not make any sense.  I am having a hard time expressing what I am thinking.

Posted by SpaceCityHockey from Houston, TX on 04/12/09 at 03:39 PM ET

When a team buys out a contract, they are required to pay 2/3 of the remaining value left on the contract.  So if the Wings buy out the last two years of Franzen’s contract, they will be paying 2/3 of the actual salary owed to him, rather than the average yearly salary.

Additionally, a contract that is bought out counts against the cap.  The bought out amount is divided by twice the years remaining on the contract, and applied against the cap for that number of years.  So if the Wings decide to buy out the last two years of Franzen’s new deal (where he makes $1 million a season each year), they will have to pay him $1.33 million dollars and they will take a cap hit of $500,000 over the four year period after the buyout.

All of these people who are saying the Wings can always buy-out these long term contracts are really missing the fact that if the Wings decide to buy a couple of these players out, they are going to lose a couple million dollars in cap space over a several year period.  For that reason, and given the intense work ethic that is expected from each player, I would be shocked if any of these players were bought out.  Its not the Wings’ style to dump a player like that (see: Chelios, Chris) and it doesn’t make much business sense unless the player’s game and conditioning really fell off.

Posted by John from Pittsburgh, PA (Wings fan for life!) on 04/12/09 at 04:33 PM ET

He had the cap space to sign a “traditional” deal.

But why do that?  If these longer deals with lower cap numbers and super-long terms for upper-tier are so bright, and Holland’s known about them the whole time, why not do that with Datsyuk too?  Why ‘waste’ cap space by not optimizing each deal?  Why not go out five more years for much less per year and bring Datsyuk’s contract value per year well under 6?  If Zetterberg and Franzen are guys who the Wings think are safe bets to put these kind of contracts on… why not Datsyuk too?

Pre-testing years:  It wasn’t cheating if there were no rules against it and no testing to enforce the rules.  Was it unethical?  Perhaps… (snip)

Much better word, Baroque.  What Holland is doing isn’t cheating, that word was too strong.  It is unethical.

To pretend this was an unforseeable circumvention is absolute rubbish, as has already been pointed out.  It is specifically worded that the AVERAGE salary is the cap hit.  That can NOT be a mistake.  Instead of just saying that “annual salary = cap hit”, which would the the logical default, they -and by “they” I mean “a bunch of lawyers”, as has also been mentioned before- made the conscious decision to word it that way.  This was not a mistake, it was not an oversight.  This was the result of a season-long work stoppage, and for anyone to pretend it was just some slapped together document is ridiculous and moronic.

The large difference here is that Holland is stepping contracts down to one million dollars in the final years of the deal as obvious means to severely surpress the overall cap figure, and extending those deals out 5 or 6 more seasons in order to accomplish that.  The Gomez and Drury deals never decrease past 4.5 million and expire when the players in question will be 34 or 35… not 39 or 40.

Further, Holland didn’t employ this tactic when signing Datsyuk.  If these long contracts are so brilliant and he’s known about the step-down and average cap hit mechanic the whole time…

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/12/09 at 04:40 PM ET

Todd, I agree that parity has been a failure.  What the cap has done is separate the business savvy franchises from the not-so-business savvy franchises. But let’s look at what you are saying a little deeper.  I totally agree that fixed operating costs were a big part of the lockout, but what the teams really wanted were fixed operating costs that are relatively similar to the other teams…aka, parity. 

Its not as if before the lockout owners had contracts foisted on them that they had to pay whether they wanted to or not.  They weren’t being forced to take on contracts against their will.  If they each wanted fixed operating costs, they each could have imposed their own spending limits on their teams, as some franchises did.  But why didn’t that work?  Because its a prisoner’s dilemma. 

If one team commits to a spending cap, it only benefits them if all other teams do as well because that’s the only way to guarantee that salaries won’t rise to incredible levels and price the smaller spending teams out of the labor market.  If only one team commits to the cap, and no others, then that team gets royally screwed and can never collect any talent (like the Minnesota Wild pre-lockout).

So to fix this problem, to solve the prisoner’s dilemma, Gary.Ass proposed a parity system where each team was limited in how much it could spend overall and how much each player could make (the overall contract size limit).  While you are saying it was all about fixed operating costs, I am saying that fixed operating costs cannot be guaranteed without some sort of parity system in place.  The two concepts go hand in hand.

Now, Gary.Ass also understood that most teams make their money in the playoffs.  So, in order to spread the revenue around even more, he wanted to make sure that more teams see playoff action on a regular basis.  Before the cap it was totally legit for a team to re-open a contract with a player (as Yzerman, Shanahan, and Lidstrom did in the summer of 2001 so the Wings could sign Hasek, Robitaille and Hull).  It was also illegal to buy-out a contract.

The effect of these two changes now means that when teams are out of cap space, or want to make room for new personnel, they cannot re-open a contract.  They either have to sit pat or buy-out a player.  The intended effect was that more players were supposed to move from team to team, and thus more talent.  Change is only good if things aren’t going well, thus these rule changes were meant to hurt teams that were perennial contenders (like the Wings, Stars, Avs, Blues, Rangers, etc.,) and help teams that were not. 

By instituting these rules changes, Gary.Ass hoped to create a system where the big money teams were forced to shed personnel often, and the smaller market teams could afford to buy up the newly unsigned talent. 

I know that this whole process is all about business, but there were very real effects that were supposed to happen to the game itself based off of these business decisions.  Gary.Ass’ intention was to create a parity league where the number of teams in legitimate contention for the cup every year was increased from the 2-3 there were before the cap in order to increase revenue to the smaller market teams.  In some markets this has failed, and in some markets it has succeeded.

Posted by John from Pittsburgh, PA (Wings fan for life!) on 04/12/09 at 04:59 PM ET

“Spirit of the cap” is just a spin word created by those in the hockey media who want to yell “no fair”. To hell with them. Number 12 is for you assholes.

Posted by bobby lang from The Ohio State University on 04/12/09 at 11:56 AM ET

Brilliant.

Posted by Jeebus on 04/12/09 at 05:36 PM ET

Further, Holland didn’t employ this tactic when signing Datsyuk.  If these long contracts are so brilliant and he’s known about the step-down and average cap hit mechanic the whole time…

I don’t know where you live, but where I live, the economic climate right now is much different than it was when Datsyuk was signed, two seasons ago.

Remember how the cap’s been going up constantly since it was introduced?  We all know that, for the forseeable future, that is not going to be the case.  So, why is Holland doing this now when he didn’t feel he had to with Datsyuk.

Instead of me answering that question, how about I ask another.

*ahem*

Do you REALLY have to ask?

Another question.

*ahem*

Do you simply not understand the difference between April 2007 and April 2009?

Oh, and there’s actually another tangible reason why Holland is doing this now and didn’t when he signed Pavel Datsyuk.

See, last year we won the cup.  Being a self-proclaimed Wings fan, you are probably aware of this.  You’re probably ALSO aware that we picked up this guy who we played against in the finals.  He was on the Pens.  I can’t think of his name though…it’s right on the tip of my tongue.

Anyway, his name isn’t important.  What IS important is that he signed a one-year deal with us and has played really well.  So he’s in line for a good-sized contract, but we ALSO know that both Zetterbeg and Franzen are in line for steep raises.  So, two keep Zetterberg, Franzen AND this other guy (Jesus, it’s so frustrating to be forgetting this guy’s name…I’m sure you’d recognize him if you saw him anyway…), they need to get creative.

Now, I’m sure if Holland knew about picking up this guy and knew that Franzen would- HOSSA!  That’s the guy’s name.  Marian Hossa.  He was on the Pens?  Remember?  Then he signed with us?  Whew, that’s a load off my mind.  Marian Hossa.  How did I ever forget that?  Anywho, if Holland had known that Franzen would develop the way he did and that they would sign Hossa and Hossa would want to STAY past the one- year contract, and if Holland knew that Zetterberg’s, Franzen’s, and Hossa’s contracts would all be up for renewal at these salaries, he might well have done Datsyuk’s deal differently.

Any more dumb questions?

Posted by Garth on 04/12/09 at 07:03 PM ET

Any more dumb questions?

F’ing hilarious.

Posted by John from Pittsburgh, PA (Wings fan for life!) on 04/12/09 at 08:27 PM ET

“Obama + Presidency = Socalism

Bettman + NHL Comissioner = President Obama”

Bwahahahahaha!!  Give Surfer Ken d-bag of the year award!!  Then kill him!!

Posted by Puckhead from Jersey, you fags! on 04/12/09 at 10:44 PM ET

HockeyinHD, look this is not semantics. You can’t compare steroids in baseball and this cap dilemma that you have. Steroids were illegal according to federal law (1990 by Bush Sr.) during most of their heyday in baseball. That is what makes it wrong and/or unethical. It wasn’t in the baseball bylaws for the same reason the cap # is determined the way it is; namely, a collection of individuals flexed their collective muscle to make sure it stayed that way. Baseball needed the long ball to bring fans back to the game. Selig et al turned their heads and allowed the fiasco to happen (as did the public) because a home-run race was exciting and re-energized a disillusioned fan-base.

The hockey salary cap is the way it is because the players wanted to have some wiggle room in a salary cap world. No one can say that the stuff in the cap rules are their because Bettman and his cronies weren’t prescient, on the contrary, it is because the guys on the other side of the table were. Lest we forget, these two sides had a whole year away from the sport to hammer out the terms. All of the “loopholes” are there because they were allowed to be there so that everyone would sign. (Something as glaring as averaging a cap # vs. being an actual yearly amount would not have been “missed” by all of the lawyers. They knew what they were doing. They may not have expected 10+ year contracts, but they knew there would be 4, 5, 6 etc. No one complained about Draper’s contract or Ozzie’s or what about contracts that get larger over time like Kronwall’s or Big Johnny’s? Why is that not an issue? Because it was expected. ) Guys like Burke and Holland and Wilson have each found those “loopholes” useful in various cap related issues. As Todd so aptly put it: That’s business. It’s not unethical to draw up a contract that fulfills every one of the cap rules and is done in full daylight.
This isn’t sneaking a shot into your bicep and taping another man’s urine to your gonads. This is just doing the best deal within a framework that is setup to allow such a deal to happen.
Or as Kate might say:
This is hockey, bitches.
Go Wings. Rest of the league? Sit and spin.

Posted by SharkBaiter from at play in the Labs of our Lord on 04/13/09 at 02:45 AM ET

Chen put on his hissy-fit pants after the Zetterberg signing, too.

Those comments can be found here.

Not on my machine.  I tried clicking on that link and got re-directed here:

Posted by O-Joe on 04/13/09 at 06:09 AM ET

HockeyinHD, where were you last year when Niedermayer, Selanne, and the Ducks violated the ‘Spirit of The Cap?’ Where were you when the Preds, needing to dump salary (despite being far below the cap) traded the rights to negotiate with Kimmo Timonen and Grover Hartnell to the Flyers to get their first-round pick back?  What about those violations of the ‘spirit’ of the rules?

I thought the whole Neidermayer thing was obviously unethical.  I don’t think trading the negotiating rights to Timonen and Hartnell was unethical because if it’s obvious a team isn’t going to re-sign a guy, and it was obvious that the Preds weren’t going to spend the cash on those guys to keep them, then move the rights and get something for them.  What they did is no less ethical than trading impending UFAs during the last two months of the season.

Additionally, a contract that is bought out counts against the cap.  The bought out amount is divided by twice the years remaining on the contract, and applied against the cap for that number of years.  So if the Wings decide to buy out the last two years of Franzen’s new deal (where he makes $1 million a season each year), they will have to pay him $1.33 million dollars and they will take a cap hit of $500,000 over the four year period after the buyout.

When there is a discrepancy in the current salary amount versus the averaged yearly salary… that gets figured in too.  It’s not just ‘remaining money to be paid out’.

Anywho, if Holland had known that Franzen would develop the way he did and that they would sign Hossa and Hossa would want to STAY past the one- year contract, and if Holland knew that Zetterberg’s, Franzen’s, and Hossa’s contracts would all be up for renewal at these salaries, he might well have done Datsyuk’s deal differently.

Interesting.  So in 2007, rather than preserving as much cap space as possible by employing a contract tactic he was allegedly already aware of and dramatically increasing the cap space he might have down the road to sign more (or better) players, Holland simply decided ‘Oh, *#$%@& it.  I have no idea if Franzen, or really any of my young players, will turn into upper-tier talent, and I don’t know for sure if there’s anyone in the NHL I might want to eventually sign… so I’ll just offer a regular contract and to hell with the future.”?

You should be much more careful throwing the word ‘dumb’ around if that’s what you bring to the table, Garth.

HockeyinHD, look this is not semantics. You can’t compare steroids in baseball and this cap dilemma that you have. Steroids were illegal according to federal law (1990 by Bush Sr.) during most of their heyday in baseball. That is what makes it wrong and/or unethical.

Interesting.  So the problem you have with the people that took steroids (assuming, for the moment, you had one) wasn’t that they cheated… but that they broke a law?  Are you similarly put out with players in other sports who break laws?

All of the “loopholes” are there because they were allowed to be there so that everyone would sign. (Something as glaring as averaging a cap # vs. being an actual yearly amount would not have been “missed” by all of the lawyers. They knew what they were doing. They may not have expected 10+ year contracts…

Ding ding ding!

Let me ask you a question.  Would you feel equally comfortable if Holland had signed Zetterberg to an 100 million dollar, 100 year contract?  That’s not against the ‘rules’ either.  Nothing in the rules say you can’t sign a player to a contract that he’ll be 130 years old at the end of.

My point here is that eventually we’re talking about degrees, and ethics.  Holland is swimming in a gray area right now, as much as some of the more, um ‘ardent’ Wings fans may not want to admit.  Sure, it provides some degree of competitive advantage for the Wings because it exploits the cap in a way the builders of the cap system couldn’t really have anticipated, but I’m a little disappointed in Holland for stooping to twist the system so baldly.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/13/09 at 07:12 AM ET

HD, did it ever occur to you that Holland frankly doesn’t give a rats ass about the current CBA, in the respect that it was never a system that was beneficial to Ilitch and the Wings organization?

Example—out government isn’t supposed to make decisions based on religion. Can you honestly tell me though, that of the thousands of politicians in the history of our nation, most of them have never made decisions about politics that were heavily influenced by their religion—in other words, their underlying belief system?

Does that make those politicians unethical? Because they violated the “spirit of America”?

If you feel what Holland did is unethical, then you must support the current CBA and salary cap. I, for one, do not support it. If anything, I think the current CBA and cap are unethical in and of themselves. As such, nothing Holland did is unethical, in my mind.

So perhaps the issue really, is that you have a completely different ethical view of the CBA than most of us. Which is fine, I don’t hate you for it, you’re still a Wings fan, you’re still a good guy. We just disagree here. I can’t call Holland unethical for what he did, because I don’t believe that it’s unethical. If anything, I hope the Zetterberg and Franzen contracts signal to Jacobs and his band of idiots that when the CBA needs to be re-drafted, Ilitch and the other good owners in the league will not be “yes men” this time around.

And now to John… one quick thing… I get your point about buyouts, but all I have been saying is that if a contract really becomes an albatross, there are options if the current CBA continues, in that players can be sent to the AHL, or their cap hit can be significantly reduced via buyouts. It’s not the ideal way to go, but the point was that these long-term contracts that some critics say are dangerous to the clubs signing them, are really only dangerous to clubs that sign them and can’t actually afford them. For Ilitch, this isn’t the case.

You coming back to Michigan soon? Call me sometime.

Posted by Nathan from the scoresheet! on 04/13/09 at 10:59 AM ET

HD, did it ever occur to you that Holland frankly doesn’t give a rats ass about the current CBA, in the respect that it was never a system that was beneficial to Ilitch and the Wings organization?

That’s always possible, of course, but just because someone doesn’t think a rule is ‘fair’ doesn’t inherently invest the person with the right to ignore it in specific, or ethics in general, in their attempts to get the rule changed.

Example—out government isn’t supposed to make decisions based on religion. Can you honestly tell me though, that of the thousands of politicians in the history of our nation, most of them have never made decisions about politics that were heavily influenced by their religion—in other words, their underlying belief system?

Does that make those politicians unethical? Because they violated the “spirit of America”?

Excellent point.  I think pretty much all politicians are unethical.  I also don’t think the fact that politicians are unethical or that they routinely pass laws that are ‘unfiar’ as I percieve it gives me the right to act unethically in kind.

If you feel what Holland did is unethical, then you must support the current CBA and salary cap.

Incorrect.  I think what Holland did is inethical, and I do not think being inethical in the face of the inethical is a behavior which moves the debate forward or reaches the desired end.

Seriously, do you really think that Holland’s behavior here is going to bring the cap to an end?  Of course not.  The league offices will simply write Holland’s loophole out of the CBA (if they elect to), and business (and the Cap) will continue unabated.  All that will have been accomplished is Holland mortgaging his ethical reputation to accomplish a short term competitive advantage of dubious value.

In reality, I highly doubt the Wings even want the salary cap to go away.  They have an enforced reason to have profit margins of 15-20 mil a year, franchise values in a league with defined expenses will rise faster than in a non-capped league, and their drafting and talent evaluation obviously gives them a leg up on the majority of other teams.  What I think the Wings want to go away is revenue sharing, which is NHL-enforced robbery.

Pissing off the NHL offices by making the systems they put together look stupid isn’t the best way to make that happen… even if the systems are stupid.

Posted by HockeyinHD on 04/13/09 at 12:28 PM ET

Interesting.  So the problem you have with the people that took steroids (assuming, for the moment, you had one) wasn’t that they cheated… but that they broke a law?  Are you similarly put out with players in other sports who break laws?

Surely breaking a law is cheating and is far worse than breaking some unwritten spirit, is it not? I don’t see that as a perverse stance. The point is that the steroids issue was a seedy affair carried out in hotel rooms and under hush-hush, big money kickback/payoffs, type illegal circumstances. This is not. Why is it a problem to sign players to a front-loaded contract, but not a back-loaded contract?

I really can’t grasp how you can be this annoyed and truly believe that this is “mortgaging (an) ethical reputation to accomplish a short term competitive advantage of dubious value.”

I can’t see God, Buddha, Vishnu, Ra, etc judging Holland and keeping him out of Valhalla because he played by the rules as they were written, but not by some unknown unspoken rule that he was supposed to guess at.

Posted by SharkBaiter from at play in the Labs of our Lord on 04/13/09 at 01:17 PM ET