Just an interesting thought about the salary cap...

I don’t know that this matters all that much, but it seems like the salary cap floor (which teams have to spend above) could actually lead to teams losing money.

The cap keeps rising every year, and the floor rises with it.

But look at a team like the Blues or the Islanders, who are having trouble earning money due to attendance problems and such. Say one year, the cap rises to $60 Million and the cap floor ends up at $34 Mil. Also, say that in the year before, the Blues had a record low for attendance and in total, only brought in $32 million.

Now you’ve got a team which needs to spend $2 million more than it actually can just to keep a complete roster and not fall out of the NHL. If the extra money couldn’t be found, and no one can say that $2 million bucks is just going to be lying about waiting to be picked up, then the franchise would collapse, and we’d have to relocate it.

There’s probably a good number of you who would have no problem seeing the Hamilton Blues or the Winnipeg Islanders (? Winnipeg is on solid ground…might have to change that) Anyways, what I’m saying is that even though some of you would be fine with three more Canadian teams, and maybe even a couple of you out there would love seeing a franchise in Oklamhoma, where they’ve never seen ice unless it’s in a fridge.

But if the NHL has teams relocating left and right just because they can’t afford to reach the salary cap floor with low attendance, it could ultimately cause instability in the league, and an eventual shutdown of the NHL. We could see another WHA-style league form, where there’s no Cap, only 15 teams, and all the star players head over there to get $15 mil. a year. That would collapse too, I bet, and we’d end up having hockey as just a beer-league or peewee sport. And I can’t imagine any of you being happy with that.

Now, being 14, I don’t really think Mr. Bettman’s going to say, OMG, this kid has an amazing realization, we should immediately change the league. So for now, just keep this blog in mind, and in the next ten years, when the Hamilton Blues announce that they have to move to Las Vegas due to salary problems, remember what I said. You Hamiltonians would have to put up a harder fight than the people in Nashville, who were essentially the main reason that we still have a Nashville Predators in the league.

I think game 2 is going to Pittsburgh, 3-1, by the way. Malkin gets two points.


STARS RULE!!!!!!!