Article: Does the NHL Have A Sun Belt Issue?

[Tom Schreier]

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[Scalptrash]

It's not sun belt teams that are winning, it's large market teams. There is more to the story and how the NHL generates revenue and avoids losing revenue. Welcome to the modern era of professional sports. The leagues dictate, in one way or another, who succeeds, to some degree. Not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes with the league, owners and player association. One example, why is the draft lottery conducted behind closed doors? Why is that even necessary? How did Chicago conveniently get the first pick after Kane and Towes left the team? Just ask the Timberwolves about "draft lottery" luck.

Why are elite players conveniently traded without any discussion or negotiation? Examples: Rantanen and/or Doncic.

Don't plan on the Wild appearing in any cup championship games until there is a new owner, NHL commissioner, and the league is exposed. The Wild are a successful franchise and everyone involved is happy, or at least content. As long as tickets are being sold and the team is generating revenue, it's good enough.

[Patrick]

Bettman targets non - traditional markets and non - traditional markets win 75% of the Stanley Cups....coincidence?  Absolutely not.

To all the skeptics.  Look at the Avs PP advantage the year they won the Cup vs the year before and the year after.  With nearly the identical roster.  The league is not fixed but they "help" certain teams.

[MrCheatachu]

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The league must raise the cap ceiling and lower the floor to allow the teams with the most support to leverage their financial advantage, within reason, while allowing the lesser-supported teams to operate on a budget in losing seasons. 

Have we forgotten about the Arizona Coyotes already?  Lowering the cap floor would give guys like Meruelo even less motivation to put a competitive team on the ice

[mnfaninnc]

I'm not sure this is right. It looks right until you get to the actual dollars vs. monopoly money. 

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Regardless, the only positive takeaway from the league punishing the Wild for the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter contracts is that it indicates ownership is willing to spend on the team. Detroit, Vancouver, and the New Jersey Devils also suffered cap circumvention penalties, meaning ownership in those markets was willing to spend more than the league would allow.

Tom is suggesting here that the Wild were willing to spend more on their team. In reality, they didn't. With the penalties, it was in cap money, or monopoly money, not real money which was a pittance of a buyout. Now, I'll give you that the original plan was to buyout Parise/Suter's last 3 years and let them go on their way. So, maybe from that perspective there was more. 

The Devils got burned by Kovalchuk and didn't have much in penalties but were allowed to get out of it. Detroit was able to LTIR Federov, and both the Panthers and Canucks had to pay a portion of the penalties on Luongo. Even Chicago got to LTIR Hossa.

Tom seems to be advocating going away from a hard cap and more into a soft cap with a luxury tax like baseball has. Personally, I think the hard cap is necessary to keep in place. Sun Belt teams will cycle out of there championship mode and somebody else will take their spot. I do think the Canadian teams are at a disadvantage, as seen by the amount of players who blanket NTCs towards them. Why is that?

I think part of it is that successful Canadians get taxed very high. Their weather is brutal. Their dollar is weak. We saw in Kalisha's article how much of an advantage a star/elite player has in keeping his money by going to a no tax state, which typically has better weather. Yes, they do have a fan base where hockey is the #1 sport in that city. In the Sun Belt, hockey can be an afterthought, especially in basketball country. 

But, even then, why do the Sun Belt states attract better talent? The answer isn't to switch the salary cap around. That would give your Rangers a distinct advantage. It wouldn't, necessarily, help your Canadian teams either. 

My suspicion though is that the NHL has been trying to help these teams, because they definitely seem favored in the draft lottery. This is about the only way they can do it. So, I reject the premise of the article.