Thread: The Official CBA Negotiations/Lockout Super Thread

Originally Posted by santiclaws

C'mon. That was a conspiracy to commit fraud. The people that actually paid those salaries, the voters, had no idea. Player salaries are established by a free market.


Why? Parity? I get the concept, and I know "parity" is a popular mantra but to my knowledge there is no research showing that parity is good for a sports league. Why is it better than to have a hated villian, like the Lakers or the Yankees? There's lots of leagues in all sorts of sports around the world were parity is not even a pretense. The MLB, NBA, European football have no parity. It sucks for fans of the teams that have no shot, granted, but is it bad for the leagues overall? I've seen no evidence of that. I've also seen it argued that the NHL is somehow different but that's another assertion for which there is no factual support.

I keep seeing this word thrown around and, for the life of me, I don't understand why people think there is parity in ANY of the leagues out in NA. The NBA, the NFL, MLB...they all have two to four teams that always end up in the top and 10 or so teams that never ever to anything. The rest are just there to fill out playoff spots and, on the rare year, win outright. Hell, one could argue that the NHL has more parity than any of those leagues and it hasn't done much for the popularity of the league.

Really though, think about it.

NFL: Packers, Steelers, Giants, Patriots (recently)
MLB: Cardinals, Yankees, Giants, Dodgers
NBA: Lakers, Celtics

There have been other teams that have made runs of course, but for the most part parity is just a word that people use to make fans believe their teams will be competitive year after year.

It's going to be a loong coold winter.

Originally Posted by santiclaws

C'mon. That was a conspiracy to commit fraud. The people that actually paid those salaries, the voters, had no idea. Player salaries are established by a free market.

The NHL salaries are artificially inflated due to circumvention of the cap by use of frontloaded contracts. The idea was to link salaries to revenue but thsi frontloading has resulted in teams actually spending well over the cap even though their cap hit is in range. Middle tier players are getting superstar wages. Owners raise ticket prices, revenues increase as such, the cap goes up, players salaries go up, and owners raise ticket prices, and on an on it goes.

Guess who is ultimately paying for all of this.

Originally Posted by SmytheKing

I keep seeing this word thrown around and, for the life of me, I don't understand why people think there is parity in ANY of the leagues out in NA. The NBA, the NFL, MLB...they all have two to four teams that always end up in the top and 10 or so teams that never ever to anything. The rest are just there to fill out playoff spots and, on the rare year, win outright. Hell, one could argue that the NHL has more parity than any of those leagues and it hasn't done much for the popularity of the league.

Really though, think about it.

NFL: Packers, Steelers, Giants, Patriots (recently)
MLB: Cardinals, Yankees, Giants, Dodgers
NBA: Lakers, Celtics

There have been other teams that have made runs of course, but for the most part parity is just a word that people use to make fans believe their teams will be competitive year after year.

I don't really understand this.

NFL: Taking the Super Bowl era only, 18 different teams have won the championship in the last 46 years.

MLB: Only 2 of the current 30 teams/franchises have never appeared in a World Series and only 8 have never won. The Yankees have won the most but only once in the last 12 years and, over that same time, no team has won back to back or more than twice.

NHL: In the 23 seasons played between 1988/89 and 2011/12, 15 different teams won the Cup, with only four teams winning multiple times. In my mind, the NHL's "dark days" in terms of parity were between 1996-2003 when it was all about Colorado, Detroit, and NJ (with the one Dallas win thrown in) and the SCF ended in sweeps four years running.

NBA: This the bad one of the bunch. Of the 33 championships since 1980, only 9 teams have won (and, if you exclude PHI (1), DAL (1), HOU (2), and MIA (2)), that leaves only 5 teams in 27 years.

In all leagues, Dynasties have existed (Steelers in the 70s, 49ers in the 80s/90s, Yankees in the late 90s/early 2000s), and some teams have been good a lot more than they've been bad (because of good ownership (e.g., J. Buss) or GMs (e.g., K. Holland). Parity certainly exists in the NHL and NFL -- if not also in MLB. Parity doesn't mean no dynasties or consistently good teams. Even with the Yankees, how good were they between 1982 and 1995? And we all know the last time the Canadiens won the Cup. And how you can say parity hasn't done much for the popularity of the NFL is beyond comprehension. It certainly can't be said that the meteoric rise in popularity of the NFL over the past 30 years or so was solely because of "parity," but it certainly hasn't hurt. And, equally as true, the same measures that dictate some level of parity are the same measures that allow a city of barely over 100,000 people (or, if you prefer, a metropolitan area of just over 300,000) to support a team that has been consistently competitive over the past 15-20 years.

Report: Mark Recchi tells locked-out players that waiting will make things worse - NHL News | FOX Sports on MSN

Good article,

Originally Posted by Ice24

Report: Mark Recchi tells locked-out players that waiting will make things worse - NHL News | FOX Sports on MSN

Good article,

Everyone knows this, except Fehr's puppets.

The players should get roles as zombies on The Walking Dead.
They wouldn't need to act.

Originally Posted by CUP4LA

The NHL salaries are artificially inflated due to circumvention of the cap by use of frontloaded contracts.

No, the cap is an artificial deflation of salaries. That's the whole point of having a cap. The circumvention of the cap is an attempt to bring salaries more in line with what they would get paid if the marked was free. That's natural, not artificial. The owners are circumventing the cap to pay players what they believe the players are actually worth. Your opinion that middle of the road players are getting paid more than what they are worth is unsupported by facts, since the market has determined what they're worth what they're getting paid. Players are paid what the market will bear, at least a market with an artificial wage control in the form of a cap on salaries. If it wasn't for the cap, the players would be getting more than what they're getting.

at least until the league collapsed back to 12 teams

Originally Posted by Ice24

Report: Mark Recchi tells locked-out players that waiting will make things worse - NHL News | FOX Sports on MSN