“It will ultimately come down to the revenue-sharing system we have in the game,” Kelly told the Team 1040. “I mean the haves - the big market teams - are doing very, very well financially, and they could probably do more in the way of revenue sharing to help out those teams that are in the bottom five or six on the list to help make them more stable financially….

Somewhere Asst. GM Jim Nill is just cringing at that quote.

Posted by SYF from Las Vegas, NV on 07/24/08 at 03:12 PM ET

Definitely, SYF.  The Red Wings see no reason to give half their playoff gates to the NHL to subsidize the Predators and Blue Jackets, and I’d imagine that every other team that has to hand over whatever it is that they’re charged—I think it’s $5 or $10 million, plus playoff gates, but I’m not sure—feels the same way.

If the NHL was willing to re-vamp the CBA to take its revenue sharing money from a small percentage (think 1% or less, like millage tax small) of teams’ regular-season gate receipts, I’d imagine that drawing from a vastly larger pool of money at a discounted rate would placate the big guns while producing a much bigger pool of funds from which small-market teams could draw necessary funds. 

As is, teams like the Wings really do feel that they’re making up the difference for clubs who claim that spending over $30 million equals a season in the red. 

I might have all but an “I [heart] NHLPA” bumper sticker on my car, but I sure think that Kelly’s done and said some dumbass things of late in protesting the IIHF suspensions of Radulov, et. al. and suggesting that it’s the big markets, not the league, that need to “fix” the league’s issues.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 07/24/08 at 10:46 PM ET

You can listen to the entire interview courtesy of the “Bmac and Rintoul” show here, and Kelly suggests that the NHL and NHLPA are not a partnership, but are more akin to a “joint venture” as the NHL equals an employer and the NHLPA’s members are employees who deserve to be treated decently and have a say in the game as their salaries are linked to the league’s revenues.

Posted by George Malik from South Lyon, MI on 07/24/08 at 10:52 PM ET

So by siphoning off playoff revenues is he telling the teams that want to build successful organizations that they would be better off winning for only a few years and then resolving to suck for a few years to get high draft picks and avoid contributing playoff money to the poorer teams?  Because if that is what the league wants, it would help if they just came out and said so in order to make the enforced mediocrity explicit.

(And why do so many people gripe and complain and moan about the prospect of individuals who make a lot of money paying more in taxes to support poorer people as income redistribution as one of the most evil concepts in economics, as well as being completely ineffective, but when it comes to a more profitable team generously donating some of their hard-earned proceeds in an attempt to keep some millionaires pockets from being drained a bit less slowly, because of their own business decisions about where to have or buy a hockey team and leverage it into a land development deal so the hockey team doesn’t even matter anyway, it is a good thing to redistribute the corporate income?  They knew what they were getting into and knew they weren’t going to make money right away, so stop your whining and take your losses like a man - until you sell the team and realize a huge profit that way, of course.)

Stupid whining owners should shut up and grow up and stop begging. 

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 07/25/08 at 05:12 AM ET

It is the same old thing.
Envy the successful, and take from them legislatively all you can.

Not just financially, either.
The NHL created the CBA partially to impede the successful teams on the ice.
They wanted to castrate the Wings, the Stars, the Devils, the ‘Dique.
  Everyone out there hates the Red Wings for 1 reason:  They are consistently good on the ice.
“So if we cannot out-manage them, out-coach them, out-draft them, or out-play them, we will change the rules to destroy them. 
We would love to bring back the dead wings and laugh at them.”

The CBA also legislatively takes a bunch of the Wings’ dollar earnings from them.  They much prefer this to taking a small tax from every team to do the same thing.

Posted by w2j2 on 07/25/08 at 08:21 AM ET