Maybe we should get rid of the minimum OV rule and go with a minimum salary rule? The closer we stick to the NHL economics the easier agent signings will be in the future. If we ignore the NHL financials then we risk our UFA signings getting out of sink with the NHL... It's not realistic for an HFNHL franchise to have a 20M dollar pay roll when the NHL has a minimum over 30M, this puts player financials out of wack.
Well to chime in with a quick quick points ...
(i) Despite the grief we get over the minimum OV rule I do think it is better than a minimum salary. I'd prefer to see a $20M 70OV team than a $35M 71OV team any day.
(ii) Just b/c the NHL's cap and salaries have gone up doesn't mean ours has to.
We have not changed the max player salary in the HFNHL ($7.5M?) so there won't be any $10M contracts in the HFNHL this year. Also how far salaries escalate in the HFNHL depends on how many GM's go crazy on our own free agency. Straka could be a $3.5M guy or he could be a $7.5M guy.
Reggie likes to point to what HFNHL GM's will pay if a guy hits the market so don't go giving him any ammunition
(iii) As was already pointed out our cap is one year behind so it's only $44M for the coming season.
(iv) Hopefully this increase to $50M in the NHL is the last big bump we'll see but I guess that all depends on the Canadian dollar. When the lockout happened it was trading at 72 or 73 cents on the US dollar and now it's what 94 cents. Given a disproportionate amount of NHL revenues come from Canada the NHL's cap will for the foreseeable future fluctuate with the exchange rate.
As Doug MacClean said it's like free money for the NHL and it's players.