That’s all fine and dandy but when teams like the Maple Leafs are selling out regardless if they are good or bad (unlike Pittsburgh) and would be the biggest contributer to the revenue sharing program, wouldn’t it be safe to assume these players are still being bought by Toronto, they are just playing for Pittsburgh.  That is what happens when your best player in history retire and still get paid, that is why he is the owner now.  How ironic.

Posted by Mathew Hills from Trenton, Ontario, Canada on 06/29/08 at 10:46 AM ET

Revenue sharing only goes to teams with payrolls near the cap floor. Pittsburgh’s struggling to stay under the ceiling, so no, the Maple Leafs aren’t paying Pittsburgh’s salaries.

Besides, the Maple Leafs have never overbid to get top-tier players like Crosby. They’ve always opted, instead, to pay second-tier players like top-tier players (McCabe, Mogilny, Berezin, etc. etc. etc.), which screws up everyone else’s salary structure when a genuine top player’s up for contract.

Posted by Steve on 06/29/08 at 12:52 PM ET

Couldn’t disagree with this article more. The salary cap hasn’t helped the league. Just look back.

First of all, they lost a season. That’s never good, especially for a sport that was already just barely hanging onto a few “casual” or “fringe” fans, especially in non-viable markets. And it seems damn near half of the clubs in the league are in non-viable markets.

Second, the league turned down the deal the players offered of a hard cap, and look where they’re at now. Back to a point where the small-market teams like Buffalo can’t even come close to competing any more. Teams in bad markets like Atlanta and Nashville are wasting away already (as a side note, how sad is it to watch one of the smartest front offices in hockey, with the Preds, waste away in a market that can’t sustain them?). Essentially, we’re right back to where we were before the lockout for a number of teams (those teams that were the reason for the lockout).

Third, not only did the deal the league got backfire from a cap standpoint, it also put a floor on spending that is getting close to killing small market teams already, and it’s only been a few seasons. At least in the old system they could set their own budget and be done with it.

Finally, from a much higher, non-hockey specific level, why is it fair to have the Wings and Flyers of the league subsidize clubs that either…
- Have/had undedicated ownership (Tampa under Bill Davidson)
- Are in non-hockey markets, either due to their ownership’s stupidity, or the league office’s stupidity
- Have/had poor front offices that mismanged the club into a constant rebuilding process

It would be one thing if the clubs like the Wings and the Flyers were getting something in return for their subsidizing their peers. But they aren’t.

Maybe if the league got them a quality national cable deal with a real network, like ESPN, that brought a bit of money into the clubs. Maybe if the league got a national network deal that actually paid out a cent or two to each club. Maybe if the league re-aligned the divisions, and moved a club or two to viable markets, and allowed a team like Detroit to go East where they belong!

You tell me what the big clubs and big owners are getting from this deal. I don’t see a damn thing. As a matter of fact, the big owners got burned by the lockout, in my opinion, worse than the players did.

Posted by Nathan on 06/29/08 at 01:45 PM ET

Nathan:  That’s because this new CBA was never meant to benefit the big earners/spenders - it was always about throwing a life raft out to the weak sisters of the league. 

What was the league’s major problem before the cap era?  Teams not making a ton of money being able to stay afloat.  You had Buffalo and Ottawa years ago, and now you’ve got Nashville, Florida and Phoenix not pulling their weight now.  How else would a team like Phoenix be able to stay in the desert if it were not crazy building leases that punish them HARD for leaving or getting a nice cut of the NHL Welfare? 

We already know that the team is in Nashville for any number of ridiculous Gary-centric reasons (telling Balsillie to beat it, waiting around for a local ownership group, cutting a sweetheart deal for an old friend who conveniently is broke in Boots Del Biaggio).  This boils down to Gary getting what Gary always wants.

He wants teams in America, and dammit, that’s where they’re going to stay.  After all, if southerners dump tons of money on football (high school, college and professional) and cars going around a track...surely they’ll do the same for hockey!  It’s going to happen!  TRUST IN GARY!

It’s colossally stupid.

Posted by HockeyJoe from NY on 06/29/08 at 03:27 PM ET

This one is for Steve who had the second comment and I made the first, actually revenue sharing is attached to the teams overall revenue, which has to be declared to the league.  If what you said was true (and it’s not) nobody would spend the cap max they would spend the cap floor and get free revenue and then there would be no revenue, it is still a business don’t forget. As for the second tier players you referred to, Mogilny scored 80 points for the Leafs when scoring in the NHL was way down and 70 goals for the Sabres, hardly second tier Berezin was drafted by the Leafs (no huge contract there) and McCabe was so bad team Canada picked him for the Olympics, but I am not surprised with your wealth of knowledge reading the Cap.

Posted by Mathew Hills from Trenton, Ontario Canada on 06/29/08 at 06:54 PM ET

1. Uh, Mogilny scored 70 goals for Buffalo in 93 (when he didn’t have a bad shoulder). Of what relevance that is to his time with the Leafs, ten years later (when he did), I don’t know.

In 03-04 the Maple Leafs paid him $5.5 million to score a whopping 8 goals. I thought by calling him a second-tier player I was being overly generous. Mogilny scored 65 goals in 3 years with the leafs. Markus Naslund (by comparison) signed a contract the same year as Mogilny, for the same duration, for less (but similar) money and scored 123. The point differential is even more drastic. If you don’t see how that’s an example of the Leafs paying a second-tier forward like a first, then I can’t help you.

2. Gretzky was rightly lambasted in 2006 for the personnel choices on that Olympic team, even before the tournament. It was understandable since guys like Doan, Bertuzzi and McCabe were all taking regular shifts while Crosby and Phaneuf watched from home and Eric Staal sat in the stands. Since Sweden won the Gold, the critics seem to have been prescient, so I’m not sure that’s something that vindicates the richness of that McCabe signing.

3. Whether Berezin was drafted by Toronto or a Latvian Badminton team is irrelevent. The Leafs paid him like he was something he wasn’t.

4. Regardless of how revenue sharing is distributed (and, even though I’m not going to re-read the neverending CBA, I feel safe in thinking that you’re wrong; unless my memory escapes me, a team must both [a] show it cannot get to the cap floor without losing money and show increased earnings from the previous season before it can be eligible for revenue sharing...and, once eligible, is eligible only for enough money to get it over the cap floor, give or take a million or two), Pittsburgh doesn’t get any funds from revenue sharing. It isn’t below the cap floor and isn’t among the league’s lowest earners, so your overall point (that Toronto pays Pittsburgh’s salaries) doesn’t stand vis a vis Pittsburgh--even if you’re right about how revenue sharing is distributed, which, I’m sorry to say, you aren’t.