Opinion | High time the NHL got rid of the hard salary cap and follow the NBA
Once again, results in the play-offs demonstrate that ice hockey is bedevilled by a salary system that punishes teams for home-grown excellence
Imagine, if you will, the world of finance and commerce working the same as the world of professional team sports. Your company had a really good year on the strength of some extremely talented and diligent employees.
Naturally your competitors are interested in poaching a number of your employees by offering them a significant raise. But you trained and groomed these people and you understand that your success is rooted in them.
So you say, in no uncertain terms, I will match your offer because I want to keep them. Well, now hang on a second here.
The Blackhawks may have lost to the Blues, but they were beaten by the salary cap
Because you have been so damn successful, we are implementing a salary cap that only allows you to pay a few of your top employees well while the other talented ones will be forced to make their fortune somewhere else, most notably with your competitors.
You see you only get to keep so many of your talented employees, even if you have the financial resources to pay all of them. I mean it’s only fair because we have to ensure competitive balance since we lack performance-related balance, right? Yeah, like that’s going to happen on Wall Street any time soon.
However, it is endlessly ironic and hopelessly moronic that those same self-professed champions of free-market capitalism suddenly seek to put cost controls on themselves when they become owners of a professional sports team.
It was the former executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Union Marvin Miller who revolutionised sports.
Miller was a left-of-centre labour lawyer who routinely beat baseball owners in court and forced these paragons of capitalism to actually behave like capitalists and pay players a wage commensurate with their effort.