Yes for sure, and to be clear, I’m not suggesting I have the answers. Tax is not an area one can comfortably dabble in. You make a fair point, and perhaps endorsement deals are something that needs to be examined as well because they can be quite lucrative. I’ll leave it to brighter minds to determine whether a fix is needed, and what that fix would ultimately look like.
I do think there might be a bit of a distinction, though, between tax status and endorsement money. Taxes are imposed at the state level and have a far more immediate impact on the contractual relationship between the player and their employer (the team).
With endorsements, the player is presumably being compensated by a third party under a separate contract for services, that involves the team more or less tangentially. Different players on the same hockey club may disproportionately benefit from the availability of endorsement opportunities. Others might turn down endorsement deals that take too much of their time or offer too little, or they might not want to endorse products on the side for personal reasons. It just strikes me as a somewhat more nuanced area to regulate, much like other factors baked into a particular destination or market (housing, cost of living, healthcare, education, etc). Maybe I'm wrong. I've never actually seen an endorsement contract, how they structured, and so forth.
Different markets offer different advantages, and I suppose the more fundamental question is whether the NHL should attempt to regulate those advantages in the interest of parity, and if they do, where they should draw the line (how granular do they want to get)
