Note: This post has nothing to do with the Islanders or Rangers individually, but is certainly relevant to the plight the NHL finds itself in; therefore, it is quite relevant.
In the latest edition of their ridiculous feud, Anaheim GM Brian Burke called out Oilers GM Kevin Lowe and claimed that Lowe was responsible for the inflated salaries we're seeing this year. Apparently, because Lowe signed Buffalo's Thomas Vanek and Anaheim's Dustin Penner to offer sheets last year (Buffalo matched; Anaheim didn't), that's why $300 million in contracts were doled out on July 1 alone. Now, I don't mind Brian Burke, if only because his name is markedly similar to mine, but he's wrong on this one.
Burke's argument is as follows. Generally, a player gets an entry-level contract when he comes into the league. When he starts out-earning that one, he's supposed to be given a mid-level contract, which is eventually topped by the big-money deal he gets when he hits free agency. According to Burke, Lowe's moves have eliminated that middle deal entirely, meaning that a guy goes from his entry-level deal to the big bucks right away.
There are two problems with this statement.
First off, every other sports league has done away with the mid-level deal as well. Look at the NBA. Just a few years ago, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade each went straight from their rookie deals, which paid them roughly $1.5 million a year each, into deals that paid them $20 million a year until they become eligible for free agency. The NFL is no stranger to this phenomenom, either; with non-guaranteed deals, players are always holding out for more money and receiving extensions for years and dollars they'll never see. In Major League Baseball, the trend has turned toward young stars signing with their teams at sliding rates that take them through their arbitration years and, potentially, their first years of free agency. This is as close to what Burke considered a mid-level deal as we will ever see in sports again.
The second issue I have with Burke's blaming of Lowe is that the CBA has pretty much gotten rid of the need for mid-level contracts. Players don't hit free agency until they're 31 years old, by which time they've proven their worth. Very rarely is the case where a team doesn't know what it's getting. As for younger players who would normally be receiving these mid-level deals, that's a different issue entirely. If the player wants to continually prove his worth, thereby driving up his salary, and the team doesn't want to commit to a long-term deal worth big bucks, they can go to arbitration each year. While a player can only request arbitration after his fourth year, it occasionally takes that long for a player to develop; any player who is dominant right away is locked up as soon as possible.
So, to recap...
- Every other sport has done away with mid-level deals.
- Restricted free agents with four years service time can go to arbitration each year if they choose.
- Teams who have excellent restricted free agents are wise to sign them to long-term deals at market value.
Let's look at how Burke himself handled the case of Corey Perry. Perry is a former first-round draft pick, turned 23 in May, and scored 29 goals and had 108 penalty minutes in just his second full NHL season. Surely, someone was going to give him an offer sheet if the Ducks didn't do something. So what happened? Burke signed him to a five-year deal worth $5.25 million per season. That's less than what many of the big-name free agents received; it's half of what Vancouver reportedly offered Mats Sundin. In other words, Burke should thank his lucky stars that he gets to keep Perry for what may be five years of elite production. Sure, he'd rather pay less for that production, but that's the way the NHL is these days.
And the reason for that, of course, is the ridiculous deals given to unrestricted free agents.
We haven't discussed unrestricted free agents yet, and that's because they're the catalyst behind this whole entire thing. The trickle-down effect is unmistakable. Every time a Cliff Fletcher pays $3.5 million a year for Jeff Finger, every other defenseman of his ilk is going to want the same money. That's what drives salaries up, and as much as the GMs complain, they are the ones to blame.
A common cry in the lead-up to July 1st has been, "What was the lockout for?". Personally, I'm at a loss for words on this one. Coming off the lockout in 2005, the salary cap for each team was $39 million. The upcoming season's salary floor will be $40 million. Now, the NHL was smart to link the salary cap to league revenues, but it's not working. Too many teams are forced to put money into bad players just to hit the floor. Also, too many teams find themselves with too much cap room and make the wrong choices. This doesn't even begin to mention the nature of competitive bidding, which is presumably how Wade Redden is making $6.5 million a year to play for the Rangers.
And this is where it gets ugly. Let's use Redden as an example of how a big deal can ultimately ruin a player's career. It's fairly certain that Wade Redden did not request $6.5 million a year from the New York Rangers. However, given the cap room they had and the needs they had, they felt it was necessary to overpay in order to get their player. So, now, Redden has this huge deal, and with that huge deal comes pressure. The fans and media are going to be all over this guy if he doesn't perform at a superhuman level for the next six years. Same with Jeff Finger in Toronto. Nobody's going to turn down the money these guys were offered, but at the same time, their lives are going to get a whole lot complicated as a result of receiving it.
Getting back to mid-level contracts, they're not given because they simply don't exist anymore. Instead, they've been replaced by inflated salaries that aren't earned, just given out because GMs aren't being rescued from themselves. As much as I want to see the NHL succeed, I'm looking forward to the year when the cap doesn't increase; in fact, I'd love to see it decrease, just to see some accountability for all this spending. The GMs in the NHL have taken the most perfect salary system in sports and destroyed it. Instead of blaming each other for it, they need to look in the mirror and realize what they've done - preferably before we need another work stoppage to correct it.
In the latest edition of their ridiculous feud, Anaheim GM Brian Burke called out Oilers GM Kevin Lowe and claimed that Lowe was responsible for the inflated salaries we're seeing this year. Apparently, because Lowe signed Buffalo's Thomas Vanek and Anaheim's Dustin Penner to offer sheets last year (Buffalo matched; Anaheim didn't), that's why $300 million in contracts were doled out on July 1 alone. Now, I don't mind Brian Burke, if only because his name is markedly similar to mine, but he's wrong on this one.
Burke's argument is as follows. Generally, a player gets an entry-level contract when he comes into the league. When he starts out-earning that one, he's supposed to be given a mid-level contract, which is eventually topped by the big-money deal he gets when he hits free agency. According to Burke, Lowe's moves have eliminated that middle deal entirely, meaning that a guy goes from his entry-level deal to the big bucks right away.
There are two problems with this statement.
First off, every other sports league has done away with the mid-level deal as well. Look at the NBA. Just a few years ago, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade each went straight from their rookie deals, which paid them roughly $1.5 million a year each, into deals that paid them $20 million a year until they become eligible for free agency. The NFL is no stranger to this phenomenom, either; with non-guaranteed deals, players are always holding out for more money and receiving extensions for years and dollars they'll never see. In Major League Baseball, the trend has turned toward young stars signing with their teams at sliding rates that take them through their arbitration years and, potentially, their first years of free agency. This is as close to what Burke considered a mid-level deal as we will ever see in sports again.
The second issue I have with Burke's blaming of Lowe is that the CBA has pretty much gotten rid of the need for mid-level contracts. Players don't hit free agency until they're 31 years old, by which time they've proven their worth. Very rarely is the case where a team doesn't know what it's getting. As for younger players who would normally be receiving these mid-level deals, that's a different issue entirely. If the player wants to continually prove his worth, thereby driving up his salary, and the team doesn't want to commit to a long-term deal worth big bucks, they can go to arbitration each year. While a player can only request arbitration after his fourth year, it occasionally takes that long for a player to develop; any player who is dominant right away is locked up as soon as possible.
So, to recap...
- Every other sport has done away with mid-level deals.
- Restricted free agents with four years service time can go to arbitration each year if they choose.
- Teams who have excellent restricted free agents are wise to sign them to long-term deals at market value.
Let's look at how Burke himself handled the case of Corey Perry. Perry is a former first-round draft pick, turned 23 in May, and scored 29 goals and had 108 penalty minutes in just his second full NHL season. Surely, someone was going to give him an offer sheet if the Ducks didn't do something. So what happened? Burke signed him to a five-year deal worth $5.25 million per season. That's less than what many of the big-name free agents received; it's half of what Vancouver reportedly offered Mats Sundin. In other words, Burke should thank his lucky stars that he gets to keep Perry for what may be five years of elite production. Sure, he'd rather pay less for that production, but that's the way the NHL is these days.
And the reason for that, of course, is the ridiculous deals given to unrestricted free agents.
We haven't discussed unrestricted free agents yet, and that's because they're the catalyst behind this whole entire thing. The trickle-down effect is unmistakable. Every time a Cliff Fletcher pays $3.5 million a year for Jeff Finger, every other defenseman of his ilk is going to want the same money. That's what drives salaries up, and as much as the GMs complain, they are the ones to blame.
A common cry in the lead-up to July 1st has been, "What was the lockout for?". Personally, I'm at a loss for words on this one. Coming off the lockout in 2005, the salary cap for each team was $39 million. The upcoming season's salary floor will be $40 million. Now, the NHL was smart to link the salary cap to league revenues, but it's not working. Too many teams are forced to put money into bad players just to hit the floor. Also, too many teams find themselves with too much cap room and make the wrong choices. This doesn't even begin to mention the nature of competitive bidding, which is presumably how Wade Redden is making $6.5 million a year to play for the Rangers.
And this is where it gets ugly. Let's use Redden as an example of how a big deal can ultimately ruin a player's career. It's fairly certain that Wade Redden did not request $6.5 million a year from the New York Rangers. However, given the cap room they had and the needs they had, they felt it was necessary to overpay in order to get their player. So, now, Redden has this huge deal, and with that huge deal comes pressure. The fans and media are going to be all over this guy if he doesn't perform at a superhuman level for the next six years. Same with Jeff Finger in Toronto. Nobody's going to turn down the money these guys were offered, but at the same time, their lives are going to get a whole lot complicated as a result of receiving it.
Getting back to mid-level contracts, they're not given because they simply don't exist anymore. Instead, they've been replaced by inflated salaries that aren't earned, just given out because GMs aren't being rescued from themselves. As much as I want to see the NHL succeed, I'm looking forward to the year when the cap doesn't increase; in fact, I'd love to see it decrease, just to see some accountability for all this spending. The GMs in the NHL have taken the most perfect salary system in sports and destroyed it. Instead of blaming each other for it, they need to look in the mirror and realize what they've done - preferably before we need another work stoppage to correct it.
Free agency age is 27, it used to be 31 which was why the Rangers were awful. Instead of Scott Gomez, they had a team of Wade Reddens.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure a player can only go to arbitration once. He is awarded a one-year deal with either the amount he wanted or the amount the team wanted to give him. If the team accepts, he gets a one-year deal and becomes an UFA next year. Gomez did it with the Devils in the 06-07 season, got a $5M deal, and left the next year as an UFA.
The thing with the Cap is a % of revenue is spent on salary, say 57% (a number I made up). That's why it keeps going up. If revenues keep rising, yet the Rangers can only spend $44M a year, the greedy Dolans would still raise prices and still accept money. Now, with the percentage, they have to spend a certain percent on their players.
(Oh, and I'm pretty sure the Isles offered Redden 6.5 a year also and he chose the Rangers. I could be wrong there but I did hear that.)
The Cap might never decrease as long as revenue keeps going up. And revenue will keep going up because ticket prices keep going up.
Regardless of what happens, we don't see a penny of savings, so why should we care?
You're right, the free agency age is 28, not 31. They changed it FROM 31. My bad. But you can go to arbitration as many times as you want; that much I actually looked up.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the cap ever going down, either. I'd just like to see what some of these GMs would do if they were forced to be held accountable for their own irresponsibility.