We will never know how good the Chicago Blackhawks could have been if they were assembled under a previous CBA.

If there wasn’t a cap, you can bet they wouldn’t have signed Hossa because the would have stayed with the Wings. So your point is moot. While it sucks to lose players because of the salary cap, I think there is an element of Darwinism with the new system. Only the teams with strong management will be able to stay competitive while managing to restock once they hit the cap ceiling.

The Hawks are a good example of this. While they now have capable management, Dave Tallon and company dug them into a deep hole that really only gives them a 1 year window to be a considerable favorite for the cup. They will be losing players next year, probably three 2nd to 3rd line contributing players, and the Wings will be adding players next year with some nice cap relief on the way. The Sharks have fantastic management and they are near the top every year as well. It will be very interesting to see how the Pens maneuver in a year or two because of Crosby and Malkin’s ridiculous expensive contracts.

My point is the salary cap does make things interesting and buying a championship is no longer an issue. Either way, the cap is here to stay, so no point in crying over spilled milk is there?

Posted by cainer4wingsglory on 12/05/09 at 11:39 AM ET

My point is the salary cap does make things interesting and buying a championship is no longer an issue.

Buying a championship never was an issue.  Before the lockout, the New York Rangers had the highest payroll consistently and bought themselves eight years of missed playoffs in a row.

Today, a team thatc drafts well enopugh is forced to get rid of talent before it hits its prime in order to stay below the salary cap.  We never get to see how good they might have been.  We no longer get elite teams, they must be broken up before they get to that point.  That is a major loss for hockey.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 12/05/09 at 11:55 AM ET

Weirdly I agree with TPSH on this.  The NHL needs a little less parity. Keep the cap, but go with a luxury tax system for going over.  Just cause the Yankees spend way more than other teams doesn’t guarantee them the World Series. 

Part of the fun is watching teams spend big and fail, but also when they spend big and win.

Posted by yreland from Van Dieman's Land on 12/05/09 at 01:25 PM ET

The salary cap rocks.  No longer can teams be the yankees and buy all the players.  I for one can’t wait till the hawks are dismantled this summer and look forward to it in great anticipation!!  Blackhawks going back in the toilet will be great for hockey!

Posted by Salary Cap fan on 12/05/09 at 02:24 PM ET

Whether the Rangers failed to dominate despite big spending is largely irrelevant to the discussion of the salary cap and the imaginary “elite team” category. The prudent question is the budget of the Stanley Cup winners: Were they predominantly among the big spenders in the NHL? The other question is: How much success could the low spenders hope for before the salary cap era? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but just taking the Rangers or Toronto as examples of financial ineptitude and criticism of a salary cap is insufficient.

Then again, one could suggest that the salary cap Stanley Cup winners have mostly exploited the cap available. At least the competitional gap between the affluent and the less financially fortunate is a lot smaller than it could be, which - in my view - counts in favour of the salary cap. I can live with the “forced” parity and the lack of talent accumulation within a few clubs. However, I do think that the high salary cap floor is a problem that needs to be addressed for the next CBA.

Posted by Moq from Denmark on 12/05/09 at 02:33 PM ET

Moq

You fail to understand what is the cause and what is the effect in the situation.  If a team can draft (or otherwise acquire) a good young core of players they will be a winning team.  it doesn’t matter which CBA it occured under.  That was the way things worked.  there was no other way to build a good core expect through the draft.  You couldn’t buy it.  Teams that tried to buy it failed.  They became high priced non-contenders.

Any market could acquire a young core.  It could be Denver (Sakic, Forsberg), Detroit (Yzerman, Shanahan, Fedorov and later Lidstrom), East Rutherford (Stevens, Niedermayer, Brodeur).  Once these teams did this, they were good enough to contend for and win multiple Stanley Cups.  These were not the biggest hockey markets.  They were not New York, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles - they were a random smattering of NHL markets that had good management.

Once a team had a good young core of players who became stars they would have to spend money to keep them together - and yes like any contending team tehy added free agents - but the salary cap growth was mostly due to the emergence of their good young core.  As far as we had seen, any market could acquire the core and its success would give them enough revenue to keep it together.  That theory might have been tested with Tampa Bay as champions - but the test never happened due to the lockout and a new CBA.

Now what has the new CBA done for us?  You can still build a good enough team to win and you have to dismantle it as soon as you get it together.  It doesn’t have time to become a great team anymore.  Any well managed market can still build a winner - but nobody can keep it together anymore.  If the season ended today, the 2006 Stanley Cup champions in Carolina, the 2007 Stanley Cup champions in Anaheim and the 2008 Stanley Cup champions in Detroit would miss the playoffs.  That is three of the four cup winners under the current CBA.  A winning team cannot be kept together very long.  We have a lot of recnet winners that would now miss the playoffs.

You never could buy a championship under the last CBA.  You couldnt buy a player until he was an unrestricted free agent - which occurred at age 31 at the earliest (under normal circumstances).  By then, a player was on the downside of his career.  A team could buy the best of theses players available and miss the playoffs repeatedly.  The New york Rangers followed this strategy and that is exactly what they did.  Meanwhile the teams that had good young cores won the cups.

Chicago has what looks like it could become a good young core.  It is entirely possible that each of Kane, Toews and Keith will one day be Hall of Famers.  Drafting the three of them in a short period of time is enough to give the Blackhawks a very good core.  The three of them plus the rest of a normal level NHL franchise would be a very good team.  The problem is you cannot keep the three of them together with the rest of that franchise.  You have to get rid of parts to keep below the salary cap.  The Chicago Blackhawks are already planning their dismantling.  So far, their run of success has included exactly one trip to the playoffs.  They do not have a big window to win the cup.  They will be dismantled before they ever hit their peaks.  They may be dismantled before they ever win a single cup.  The fans will never get to see how good they could have been,

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 12/05/09 at 03:46 PM ET

No, I think you’re being disingenuous with the realities to support your assertion. The recent Stanley Cup champions, Pittsburgh Penguins, had and still has just as many draft picks on the roster as pre-salary cap champions. They might not be able to keep them all for a decade nor economic dominance - not that it exists in reality - to surround them with talent from the less fortunate teams. Let’s not pretend that every transaction was of the unrestricted free agent type, or that potentially good teams weren’t dismantled before they won anything at all.

There are plenty of reasons why previous champions fail to continue their success injuries, closing window and incompetent management. The difference is that they cannot compensate financially to gloss over mismanagement to the same degree, which is a good thing. Good organisations before the salary cap should be good organisations after the salary cap, similarly with the not so good. The concept is the same except for a slightly quicker roster turnover.

Undoubtedly, keeping and strengthening a winning team over an extended period of time is difficult under the salary cap. But drafting and developing talent isn’t. So while a group may not reach their peak there’s no inevitable hindrance to continued success. Sacrificing that elusive peak for a broader group challenging for the Cup is worth it to me. Obviously, not everyone agrees.

Posted by Moq from Denmark on 12/05/09 at 05:42 PM ET

The problem is you sacrifice all elite teams to get a broader group of teams competing for the cup and that is a significant loss in terms of hockey quality.

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 12/05/09 at 06:55 PM ET

You love using statistics from nhl.com to support claims that, often, fans of those teams who watch most games disagree wholeheartedly with. Using those statistics, have you quantified the “significant loss of hockey quality” yet? If not, I’d like to see it—what I’ve seen in the past four seasons has been some of the best hockey I’ve seen in my twenty years of watching hockey, especially the hockey that’s been played in the playoffs.

Posted by jh on 12/13/09 at 11:17 PM ET