Nineteen years later, Bettman's victory resounds
The NHL is getting its best players on the cheap (relatively) while the game itself thrives.
The NHL’s All-Star Weekend is nearly upon us. This year it happens in Toronto, cradle of the game, ancestral home of youth hockey politics and psychotic hockey parents, and a Stanley Cup that coincided with Sgt. Pepper. In fact, the ballyhooed and coveted drinking cup of the same name should be the prime birthday present for the most beloved Maple Leaf fan in your life.
Regardless, this is a time to celebrate the players, who bring unprecedented skill and a welcome disregard of load management to 32 NHL rinks.
There’s Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers, who have won 16 consecutive games and might become the first Canadian team to win the championship in 30 years. McDavid is a 3-time MVP.
By the way, McDavid’s contract has an Average Annual Value of $12.5 million. That would make the 10th highest-paid New York Met.
There’s Auston Matthews of the Leafs, a once and probably future Most Valuable Player who has 299 career goals at age 26 and has 40 already this season.
By the way, Matthews’ new contract, which kicks in next fall, has an Average Annual Value of $13.25 million. That’s a half-million more than Justin Turner, the 39-year-old DH, will get from the Blue Jays next year, although Turner could make $1.5 million through incentive clauses.
There’s Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche, who has scored at least one point in each of Colorado’s home games this year and, when the Avalanche won the 2021 Stanley Cup, led them with 13 playoff goals.
By the way, MacKinnon’s AAV is $12.6 million. That’s $2.4 million less than Eric Spoelstra will make, per year, in his new deal. Spoelstra coaches, but does not play for, the Miami Heat.
One of the most anxious issues of the season was the contract status of William Nylander, one of the Maple Leafs’ “core four” of forwards. Nylander did sign in mid-January for an AAV of $11.5 million over eight years, beginning next fall.
On the same day, the Dodgers signed Teoscar Hernandez, an outfielder who had a .741 OPS with Seattle in 2023, with 26 home runs and 211 strikeouts. It was a one-year deal but will pay Hernandez $23 million.
This is where someone demands that we put away the violins. NHL players make an average of $3.5 million. They can attend any Taylor Swift concert they wish. But the argument is that hockey’s elite athletes are losing ground to everyone else’s.
It comes down to a salary cap that fits snugly and cannot be removed under any circumstances. The current cap is $83.5 million per team. When the cap was pulled over hockey’s eyes in 2005, it was $39 million. So that’s impressive growth, but not lately. It has only grown by $2 million since the 2019-20 season, which was shortened by the Covid-19 pandemic.
It should grow significantly next year, maybe to $90 million, but teams face a struggle to make deals and to keep their best players. There is no Larry Bird rule like the one in the NBA that allows a club to exceed the cap to sign its home grown players.
The McDavids of the game might not be properly compensated, but they’re not the aggrieved party. The middle-class players are the ones feeling the squeeze. Neither group is traveling in the same circles as the executives. The NHL will get $480 million in sponsorship money this season. Revenue jumped 8.6 percent last season.
The Ottawa Senators were sold to a group headed by Michael Andlauer and the price tag was $950 million, which means the Magic B will be the next frontier. Already the league’s average franchise value is over a billion,
The Vegas Golden Knights joined the league in the 2017-18 season and played their way into the Finals. They also paid $500 million to get in. That seemed outlandish at the time. Soon it will look like pennies in the car ashtray. The Seattle Kraken’s expansion fee was $650 million. Cities are panting to join the next expansion wave, with Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith banging the loudest drum. Why, even Atlanta wants a team after it lost the Flames and the Thrashers (now the Winnipeg Jets) and the league is reportedly listening.
All of this goes back to 2004, when commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners announced they wanted a salary cap and the players, figuring they could merely extend their summer vacation for a few more weeks, refused. Instead, the lockout lasted all season and then vaporized the playoffs. No hockey for a full season.
No management group had been quite that brazen. And it wasn’t like the sport was in great shape. Teams were indeed losing money, and the game on the ice had coagulated. The Left Wing Lock and the Neutral Zone Trap had become serious diseases. The best players struggled to get free from off-puck embraces. Passing the puck from inside your own zone to a player on the other side of the red line – the “two line pass” — was illegal. Teams were averaging 2.5 goals per game. In the 7-game Stanley Cup final that Tampa Bay won over Calgary, there was never a lead change at any point.
The players capitulated before the 2005-06 season and accepted the salary cap. They also got the rules changes they wanted. Now they could pass the puck through several zones to speedy teammates. Interference was strictly prohibited, even by players who were away from the action. The penalty boxes were full and the goalies began to hallucinate. The old fans came back and new fans folllowed. And the shootout, which still offends the hardcore, came along to prevent deadlocks. It was preceded by a 4-on-4 overtime period, which then became 3-on-3, which filled every second with possibility.
The changes were like a charging station. Suddenly the games began in fourth gear and never slowed. Goals per game immediately went to 3.08. Power play opportunities went from 4,24 to 5.85. There was room for small magic, for a 161-pounder like Jack Hughes to get drafted first-overall, but there were still collisions, and “heavy” teams still found their footing in the playoffs.
And the salary cap put a premium on shrewd, unsentimental management and did not put an end to sustained greatness. Chicago won three Cups. Tampa Bay won two in succession. Pittsburgh extended its playoff streak to 16 seasons and won three Cups with Sidney Crosby, the first player drafted after the lockout.
No other commissioner has either had the support, the chutzpah or the determination to follow Bettman’s lead. Baseball owners keep pining for a salary cap, but enough of them remember the fallout from 1994, when the postseason never happened,, and they invariably back off. Bettman’s triumph was easily the most decisive by management in any sports labor situation. It might become known as the most conclusive blowout in the history of any labor negotiation anywhere.
When Bobby Hull considered himself underpaid, the World Hockey Association came along to make sure he wasn’t. But there aren’t enough frivolous investors to create a new league today. And maybe that’s for the best. We don’t hear the misgivings that NHL players might be voicing behind closed doors, but at least some of them realize they are feasting on a record slice. They’re fine as long as they ignore the dimensions of the pie.