Ultimately the league will need to commit to parity or not. What prospective owner is going to want to pony up $1.5bn in an expansion fee if half the league is going to put that city on their no-trade lists? Is the plan to just let the Canadian markets die because the players don't want to go there?
When the league half-asses parity, you end up with teams that get competitive advantages due to factors like this. Is the no-income-tax-state advantage, or the sunny climate/low pressure advantage actually all that different from when there was no salary cap? (the Leafs have no problem losing in either scenario)
NMC's in principle are fine. But they have absolutely reached a saturation point where huge percentages of the league and almost every player of any note has trade protection. I don't really care about the trade deadline, but it is absolutely a complicating factor in roster construction. And I am staunchly against any sort of contract clause, be it price or NMC, where a previous GM can hamstring their team for up to eight years. My Leafs are probably just too chickenshit to trade Marner, but that his and Tavares's NMC's are directly hindering our ability (not necessarily the willpower lol) to reconstruct our roster is indisputably a bad thing for the fans.
And for the record, I have zero sympathy for the players in this regard. Don't want to live in Winnipeg? Neither do I, but I have made deliberate choices in my life to avoid Winnipeg, and I'd move there in a heartbeat for even ELC money. Getting traded to a Canadian city is part of the job.
@snag 's comparison to the military is apt.