The Hard Cap Makes Nothing Better and Everything Worse
The Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets are only the most recent victims of the league's shortsightedness.
When Calgary traded Matthew Tkachuk to Florida for a package built around two late-twenties players who are both a year away from unrestricted free agency, they essentially made the decision to sign at least one bad contract. Well, that one contract is now officially on the books.
Jonathan Huberdeau is coming off of a career year that saw him rack up 115 points in 80 games, one of the five highest scoring seasons in the last ten years. He is (was?) a year away from unrestricted free agency heading into this season on an incredibly team friendly deal that carries a paltry 5.9m cap hit given his production.
However, when the 2022-23 season is over, he will be entering the first year of this deal. A deal that will shortly become one of the worst contracts in the league in terms of both length and value. That is, if it isn’t already. Perhaps the most tragic part of it all though, is that Huberdeau is worth every last dollar. He is going to put up points. He is going to help that team remain competitive. He is going to sell a shit ton of jerseys. And most importantly, he is going to put butts in seats - a thing that matters disproportionately in the NHL since its so dependent on gate revenue. And yet, none of that really matters because the league refuses to abandon its archaic hard cap system.
The greatest trick the devil commissioner ever pulled is convincing the fans that the players are greedy, do-nothing, nogoodniks and the owners are but humble businessmen seeking to provide a premium product at a reasonable price. Why fans were, and largely still are, so willing to take the bait on this, I’ll never really understand. But that’s the bed that’s been made and now we all have to sleep in it.
The Owners and Gary Bettman have spewed their bullshit about cost control and cost certainty for years now, while at the same time reminding fans that revenue is the highest it’s ever been should they muster the audacity to question the league office. The fact remains that a hard cap is only good for the owners, and nobody else. Contrarily, it’s not all that hard to make the argument that a luxury tax system with a soft cap and a revenue sharing plan for teams not in the luxury, is good for everyone.
Johnny Gaudreau is coming off a career year that saw him rack up 115 points in 82 games this year, one of the five highest scoring seasons in the last ten years. He’s reached the 75 point mark in four of his eight full seasons, and despite his obvious lack of size, has shown a remarkable level of durability. He’s never played less than 70 games in a full season, and played in 601 of a possible 619 regular season games over the course of his time in Calgary. He has also recorded 608 points in those 601 games (It should be noted that in the 2013-14 season, Johnny Hockey played one game and scored one goal. His career stat line is 210G and 399A in 602GP). He was rewarded this offseason for his robust track record as a top line playmaking winger with a 7 year deal worth $68.25m - including 14 million in signing bonuses over the duration of the contract - with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Which to be quite frank, absolutely fucking rocks.
Blue Jackets fans have had to watch as the biggest and brightest parts of their team walk out the door for years now. Finally after all those exits leaving a poor taste in their mouths, they were able to watch their team sign a big name free agent to a long-term deal to keep him in the greater Columbus area for the next seven years. But before they did that, they signed a deal that many viewed as head scratching at best and outright malfeasance at worst.
Those two deals, Gaudreau and Gudbranson, left CBJ lacking the necessary cap space to re-sign Patrik Laine. This meant that GM Jarmo Kekalainen had two options; either trade Laine or trade someone else. Ultimately, he chose to trade Oliver Bjorkstrand to the Seattle Kraken despite getting back little to no value. After all, it doesn’t make sense to bring in one of the league’s premier playmakers only to then send out one of its best finishers.
Aside from the 5.4m in cap space freed up by shipping Bjorkstrand out, the Blue Jackets only received a 2023 3rd round pick (CGY) and a 2023 4th round pick (WPG). That’s not much to begin with, but it gets even more sketchy when you look at Columbus’s depth and see they aren’t really overrun with top-six forwards, especially ones who would seem to fit quite nicely into what Columbus has built over the last few years.
So what does this have to do with Huberdeau and the hard cap? Well for one, it presents a sneak peak into the types of issues that Calgary will face next year. More than likely, they’ll try to get Mackenzie Weegar signed to an extension before the trade deadline, and will have to do so with the understanding that the cap likely wont see a meaningful increase until the summer of 2024 at the soonest. But more than that, you can look at Columbus having to trade a really, really good player for next to nothing in order to to bring in a top tier offensive talent and reasonably ask, “Is this the only way?”. Well, no actually. It isn’t.
Now, it is important to note that Columbus is both a small market and somewhat of a non-traditional market as well. So, while the luxury tax might be out of their reach financially, its existence in and of itself provides the Blue Jackets front office with options. I would be hard pressed to say no other contender would want to add a top-six, two way winger with 30 goal upside, and more than a few of them would be willing to go into the tax to do so. In turn providing the Blue Jackets with a larger list of teams to deal with, and thereby raising the quality of the return package.
And, isn’t that just so much better? Maybe a small market team can’t afford to go into the tax, but they can send a quality player to a contending team in a larger market who *can* pay the tax. Instead of having to take pennies on the dollar for a high-end two way forward, they can get a return commensurate with a player of Bjorkstrand’s caliber. Whether that be win now players or pure futures, it would allow CBJ to continue to build up the team they have instead of being forced to cut meaningful pieces off. And in so doing, hopefully eliminate or minimize the duration of their rebuild and get the most out of their new superstar Johnny Gaudreau.
As for Calgary, a luxury tax likely doesn’t change the reality of losing two top 30 forwards, but it would allow them to remain competitive for a longer period of time, which is clearly their goal. The thing about the luxury tax system as it exists in the NBA is it rewards teams for building a roster “the right way”, because teams are only able to enter the luxury tax by re-signing their own players. So while there may be concerns about how small market teams can remain competitive in a world where big market teams can throw their weight around, the system is designed to help teams keep their own players while adding talent. As opposed to being forced to choose between players, or perhaps more accurately, choose between contracts. Furthermore, by dividing the money generated from the luxury tax to the teams not in the luxury tax, you create a financial system that benefits everyone.
Two summers from now, four major pieces of this current Flames team will be unrestricted free agents. Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, Oliver Kylington, and Elias Lindholm will all be looking for their next contract, and most if not all of them are players that Calgary should hope to hold on to. As previously mentioned, Huberdeau’s extension doesn’t start until the summer of 2023. While he will have just turned 30, he should still be an elite offensive play driver and at the heart of the Flames status as Stanley Cup contenders. It would be a shame for them to lose say Andrew Mangiapane, or any of the aforementioned players, because they had the temerity to choose not to tank.
Everyone agrees tanking sucks, and everyone has their own idea about how to fix it, myself included (ABOLISH THE DRAFT!!!). But perhaps the best, if not the most realistic, answer to the problem, is to make it possible for teams to remain competitive as their stars age. Even if the players are in actuality more than worth the deals that they are on in a vacuum (which most of them very much are), the reality of the NHL being a hard cap league is that players’ value becomes relative, not just to their peers and level of production, but to their cap hit as well.
At this point, any player over 30 on a long term deal is a problem. Add in a significant cap hit, and now you have two problems. Not because the players aren’t worth the money, but because every dollar spent has an opportunity cost associated with it. Sure, that always has been and always will be the case to an extent, but it would seem to be in the best interest of both the league and the players to minimize the level of risk that comes with those decisions.
Nathan MacKinnon is scheduled to hit free agency at the end of this season. It has been the talk of the league for several years now that he was on one of the best contracts in the league… from a team perspective. Well that’s not going to be true for much longer. MacKinnon is going to undoubtedly receive the significant salary raise that he unquestionably deserves. So what happens then?
Do we really want to make one of the most fun and exciting teams the NHL has seen in years worse out of sheer spite and pettiness? Out of some misguided, at best, desire to protect the feelings of billionaires? Because let’s be honest, that’s all we’re really doing here, and it’s not even really working. We’re already seeing those same big market teams everyone is worried about flexing their financial muscle. By taking full advantage of the LTIR system as it exists and utilizing it to its fullest potential (A thing that is absolutely good and smart), teams with ownership willing to spend can in fact exceed the salary cap. So what good is a short-sighted system if it doesn’t even do the thing it’s designed to do? Is there such a thing as a pyrrhic overtime loss?
Instead, what we will likely see is Colorado be forced to move on from a good to very good player in order to create and preserve the necessary cap space required to keep MacKinnon, as well as their status as legitimate contenders. And in doing so, making the team, the league, and the ultimate product worse. Personally, I would much rather see just how great that team can become. A team built around MacKinnon and Makar and Girard and Landeskog and Newhook and Byram has a chance to become one of the greatest, not to mention most fun, teams ever.
Most people need someone to root for - even if only for a single game - to enjoy sports. But even more than that, they need someone or something to hate. The current hard cap system deprives us of both of those things. Operating under a luxury tax system that rewards teams for making good decisions, for being smart and deliberate in how they operate, by making it just a fair bit easier to keep their roster together. Then fans around the league will really have someone to focus their anger and frustration on. Then, they will have someone they can hate. As it stands now the team that most fans hate, is their own.
The hard cap succeeds in the other obvious goal of making the best teams worse every year. The entire point to the hard cap is that good teams can't keep all their players long term, no matter if they drafted them or not. This creates downward pressure on the best teams and makes staying competitive difficult unless you're willing to mortgage the future for good-value contracts (TBL). Two of my favorite things about the NHL are the draft and the cap, so I'm surprised you argue against both of them so vociferously. I like the rolling cycle of rise-and-fall that the NHL has with good teams. Some remain better for longer than others, but teams like TBL/COL having to shed players each year after their cup runs, only to have to re-load each year, is a good thing. It would be really annoying if the best teams just kept getting better, most GM's are too incompetent to be competitive without punishing success.
I just bought the sweetest Byram jersey card. Also, great piece.