The National Hockey League trade deadline came and went recently.
I mention this as the lead in to this week’s observations simply to ensure readers are aware of the deadline’s passing since it was a rather uneventful happening.
Sure there were a few trades, a couple, like Chicago picking up rental forward Andrew Ladd from Winnipeg, leading up to the deadline might even affect the Stanley Cup pools a bit.
Certainly Ladd adds some serious depth to an already strong Hawks club, which only solidifies Chicago’s odds to return to the Cup finals out of the west.
Just to get this out of the way now, barring an upset of some significance it should be a Hawks versus Washington final. As much as I’d like Alexander Ovechkin to win a Cup, and the Capitals do have Saskatchewan product Braden Holtby in net, it’s hard to imagine them winning in their first trip to the finals as a group against the veteran-laden Hawks.
It could be a solid series although I don’t follow either team near enough to be watching as June looms on the horizon, but that is a rant for another day, although in a nutshell the NHL regular season needs to lop off an eight-12 games and condense things so that hockey winds up by the first of May.
But today let me return to the trade deadline, where we all too often heard team officials extolling trades made to meet salary cap concerns, rather than making a team better.
I do understand the rationale of a salary cap, it is a bunch of owners imposing a limit of spending to try and keep themselves from overspending.
It seems sound in that every team is forced into the same financial box, and that is supposed to make teams more evenly matched in terms of roster talent.
If memory serves me correctly the NHL salary cap launched in the 2005-06 season, so we now have a decade to look at with the cap.
Ten Cups have been awarded since the salary cap, but only seven winners, which is identical to the decade prior to the cap, seven different winners in a decade.
Now if you check the NHL about one-third of the teams have never won a Stanley Cup, and they haven’t managed the trick in the last 20-years cap, or not.
In fact St. Louis, the team with the longest no-Cup record, dating back to 1967 was last in a final in 1970, and that was when one of the expansion teams made the final because they were in their own division.
In a decade you would think the salary cap would be allowing the also-ran teams to get to that Cup win more often.
Of course in the last six years there have been only three teams winning, and two of those; Chicago and Boston go back to the origins of the league.
So let’s see how some of those long-suffering teams are doing this year thanks to the cap.
Toronto, no Cup since 1967, and a raucous 52 points. Buffalo no Cup since joining the league in 1970 has 58. Columbus 60, Ottawa 67, the Wild 68, Vancouver who joined with the Sabres have 60, as does Phoenix. None of the listed are likely to even make the playoffs.
The Blues with 83 are playoff bound, but are hardly expected favourites to break their near half century drought.
So who are top teams? Well it’s the usual suspects as they say; Boston, Chicago, Detroit, the Rangers, Pittsburgh, LA. These teams have had ups and downs but are consistently in the mix.
And it’s not because the salary cap has been working for them. It’s because they draft well, find diamonds in the rough in later rounds of the draft they bring to a shine, and they make savvy trades and generally wise contracts.
Can you say that about Phoenix? Or Edmonton, TO, Carolina, Columbus and the rest of the generally bottom-dwelling denizens of the NHL?
Of course not.
But the salary cap ensures teams don’t overspend and thus lose gobs of money so it’s a good thing many suggest.
That might be true from a business perspective, and yes big sport is a business.
Sadly though that philosophy runs counter to what is good for fans.
You might detest the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers or Boston Red Sox for their seemingly rash spending on talent. We laugh when it fails, Pablo Sandoval of the BoSox a recent example, but you have to begrudgingly respect that ownership is willing to write the cheques in search of a winner.
Of course in baseball they can. There is no real salary cap.
In the NHL, well most other pro leagues owners have put a cork in the bottle to protect themselves.
And we end up with teams needing that one piece to complete the puzzle but are hamstrung based on the arbitrary cap.
Or, teams give up on players because they can’t resign them again because of the cap.
Would the Jets have let Ladd go had they had an open chequebook? Perhaps he would have opted out to chase bigger dollars with richer teams, and that is the upside to the cap, but maybe they would have wanted to hold onto their Captain too.
The cap simply limits the ability of teams to ‘go-all-in’ and go for a title, and as a fan that is disappointing.
Remember in the NHL for every team to win a Stanley Cup it would take three decades. In a lifetime a fan of a particular team might only see his team win once, if at all, as diehard St. Louis hockey fans can attest. So when that door cracks open just a bit to that point your team has reached legitimate contender status you want them to open the vault, spend the coin, make the run, and finally hoist the cup.
Instead, we get moves generally made to juggle salaries and preserve the cap, with winning often seeming merely a secondary motive.
