NHL GMs say, 'yes there is an economic crisis'

504Heater wrote:

davetherave wrote:

504Heater wrote:Unless you're Montreal Dave and no one wants to go and play for you.

Or maybe they benefit from this the most because players won't have a choice.

Well, Montreal doesn't rely on signing UFAs...they pretty much develop their own talent and pick up 'bargain deals'. Gainey got Kovalev, Tanguay and Lang on the cheap.

I see a team like LA being one that benefits significantly from the current economic landscape.

Well...in fairness, Tanguay cost a 1st round pick and makes 5+ million. Lang cost a 2nd and makes 4 million. Kovalev is a good deal, but that was a few years ago I think.

Tanguay and Lang are just one year deals, so they don't impact the Habs payroll beyond a single season. That's another way of getting players 'on the cheap'.

Kovalev came to Montreal for Jozef Balej.

Here's an idea... put another team in T.O. and tax the hell out of both teams, with the tax $ going into the NHL relief fund for teams in trouble.

Dash wrote:Here's an idea... put another team in T.O. and tax the hell out of both teams, with the tax $ going into the NHL relief fund for teams in trouble.

You could quite possibly have a team in Hamilton/Kitchener/Waterloo area.

Hamilton is less than a hour's drive from TO. It takes in the entire Southern Ontario market. The cash flow from that team would definitely augment the revenue pool.

The Hamilton Tigers were an NHL franchise from 1920-25.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Tigers

They had cool jerseys too:
http://hockeysweatermuseum.my100megs.com/teampages/nhlheritage/hamilton.htm

Here's an interesting piece of information from Bob McKenzie's TSN piece on the subject:

http://www.tsn.ca/columnists/bob_mckenzie/?id=270775&lid=headline&lpos=topStory_nhl

In this new salary cap world, the players never really lost an appreciable amount of their salary to the escrow tax. But because the owners are guaranteed a percentage (43 percent of all hockey-related revenue), and if they spend over 57 percent of revenue, then the players have to give it back.

This season, the players are taking a 15 percent pay cut. That's what it will end up being at the end of the year with 15 percent of their salaries going back to the owners. That number can only grow over the next year or two - or it could stay the same. But again, it will be double digits - 15 or 20 or even 25 percent - down the road, depending on how badly the economic crisis affects the league.

The upside for the NHL is that the teams are actually going to get some of that money back that they overspend. It's expected that each NHL team - all 30 of them - will get at least $4 million at the end of this season as the players hand back money that was overspent by the owners.

So another reason why Bettman--and, we might surmise the owners support him on this--would not want to contract the amount of teams, is because of all the money they are currently getting back from the players through this escrow fund.

Getting rid of teams would cost them money.