With the brief GM meetings wrapping up, Elliotte Friedman had some recent updates about the current NHL and NHLPA talking points in his written 32 Thoughts column this week. As is often the case, as a team that spends to the cap the CBA and potential loopholes or closing of said loopholes will matter significantly to how the Toronto Maple Leafs operate in the new bargaining agreement that is just 1 and 3/4 seasons away.
The first piece of news is probably the best place to start and that is there aren’t issues to send the negotiations off a cliff. Right now, both the league and the PA members are thriving. Gambling revenue and expansion fees are lining the owners’ pockets and escrow, and the flat salary cap are no longer barriers to the happiness of the players. While both sides certainly have a lot they’d be looking to tweak or take back from the other side, the fact that most NHL players have relatively short careers and the league can’t further risk losing its present status in the North American sports hierarchy a work stoppage seems unlikely.
Thought 13 really had a lot crammed into it, so let’s start with the idea of shorter contract-term limits.
While a player like Auston Matthews has already chosen to go with less than max term and to bet on himself in a rising salary cap world, it is understandable that NHLPA at-large would strongly oppose any further restrictions on contracts and not be fans of something that limits longer term financial security of the players.
It’s also worth noting that GMs like Brad Treliving have certainly used the longer available term to help flatten out the AAV on players like Chris Tanev and it will likely be something we see utilized on John Tavares’ contract as well.
Term is everyone’s friend, but also everyone’s enemy as the latter part of contracts certainly make it hard for players to live up to their perceived value and there becomes an increased effort to move players who often went into the contracts with stability as part of the draw.
There are other solutions that could be explored here, potentially making buyouts friendly from both a team and player perspective, option years on contracts, franchise players, etc. but in all likelihood the current system is already a compromise and generally inoffensive so it will probably go untouched.
As for the cap compliant playoff lineups…
I’m torn on this idea because on one hand this really levels the playing field and closes the LTIR loophole in an interesting way. If you load up at the trade deadline and then bring back your LTIR’d player for the playoffs, having to choose a lineup that fits under the cap and potentially excluding decent players to make it work is damned interesting and playing who’s in and who’s out on the lineup card adds a lot of excitement to game day.