Cost control is a joke look at the teams that are at the upper limit that are not going to make they post season. Then look at teams like Arizona adding dead cap to remain at the floor. Cap is a great thing for sports it prevents teams from doing What Detroit did for years successfully and winning cups then you had teams like Toronto and Edmonton spending like crazy with limited success I mean if the Oilers had not had Gretzky they would not have had those cups. Toronto last won a cup in 67 but from then to 2003 there spending was twice what some teams were spending. The same thing happened in MLB before a cap was put in. Even the NFL had the Cowboys spending for championships and since then how many have they won?
The cap purpose per Bettman at the time was to level the talent out giving even small market teams a chance to win a cup that has happened for the most part. It has not prevented GM’s to give out bloated long term contracts limiting teams and causing them to dive for loopholes in the contract. Like LTIR very few players play past age 34 yet contracts are inked well past that Weber , Pronger and a few others caused the league to change the CBA to stop that but still permits 8 year contracts to be signed where a 28 year old can lock up term to age 36. This has created another issue for the league like Louongo who wanted traded but could not. The league put in the buyout clauses but cases like Lou’s made it too expensive , then on a few occasions the league allowed up to three special buyouts. Then there is now situations like Kucherov who could have came back at least a month before the playoffs. And yes I’m a lightning fan and Kuch my favorite player but this situation is not good for the league. It is legal under the CBA for sure but it is a CB loophole that is now used more often by other teams as well. Using ltir to manipulate the cap is another legal but sleezy move.
This is in no way cost control, nor can it be a way to operate .
What's coherent from that is a bunch of nonsense.
Cost control has worked as expected. And once they were able to determine that player salaries were tied to revenues, the owners can continue to reduce the percentage paid out in each CBA negotiation.
The purpose of the cap was not to give small market teams a chance. That's just so ridiculously silly to believe. First of all, small market teams had a chance in the pre-Cap era since the age of UFA was so high that teams controlled the prime years of players they drafted. Teams in Detroit, Denver and New Jersey dominated the league in the years leading up to 2004. None of those could be considered big market teams.
The cap (and related lower age of UFA) was designed to control costs, which it has surely done since top player salaries are only now exceeding the pre-2004 levels, and to help direct the very best players to the biggest markets like we see in the NBA. An Atlanta Thrashers executive, I believe it was Stan Kasten, stated as much. The movement of stars like Crosby and McDavid has sort of failed because hockey players are rather conservative with their contracts and would rather commit to long term deals as soon as possible instead of positioning themselves to move to the big markets.
The ten biggest US markets are NY, LA, Chicago, Philly, Dallas, Bay Area, Atlanta, Houston, DC and Boston. In the 17 Cup winners since the cap was implemented there's been a Cup winner from the biggest team in those markets 7 times. The 17 Cup winners prior to the cap had the biggest team from those markets win twice.
Assen na yo!