NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr spoke to media during the NHLPA’s annual charity golf tournament this week. Fehr answered numerous questions regarding the salary cap, player contracts, and the Olympics.
At the outset, Fehr reiterates that the PA is against any form of salary cap, and that its presence hinders player salary growth. Fehr points out that Major League Baseball continues to function successfully without any salary limitations.
Fehr then addressed how the NHLPA deals with players potentially leaving money on the negotiating table. This question stems from the rumor that Connor McDavid walked back a $13.25MM AAV contract to one that pays him $12.5MM AAV. Fehr states that money is just one factor in contract negotiations, and the top-dollar amount is not always the main concern.
Regarding the Olympics, Fehr tells reporters that national pride drives players to play in international events, but did not expand on the PA’s position regarding player participation next season. Fehr did admit that the PA wants a series of international events just like the NHL. In the same international play vein, Fehr also admits that players have not been fully paid for the World Cup of Hockey. Prize money and stipends were handed out, but the rest of the revenue required complete accounting before distributing the players’ share.
Finally, Fehr addresses the revenue and salary gap between the NHL and NBA. The NHL, says Fehr, used to be only 20% behind the NBA in revenue numbers, but now lags behind significantly. As for player salaries, Fehr acknowledges that individual NBA players can affect the game more than an individual NHL player.
As a Penguins fan and a Pirate fan, I can attest to the fact that Fehr is 100% full of it regarding a salary cap.
The Pens can compete year in and year out and retain their best players.
The Pirates have to do everything right and still get lucky just to have a short window of contention before trading their best players.
Exactly… NHL’s system seems pretty good, as it allows for keeping superstars and building around them without allowing big money to agglomerate talent for long periods of time.
In the MLB… teams like the Pirates can never afford to miss on so much as one trade, one draft pick, one signing. They have to be perfect with scouting and coaching and development, or they’ll pay for it right away. But, the Red Sox can blow money left and right without consequence… and DFA $49 million dollar failures without seriously suffering for it. Big money failures like Sandoval would destroy most teams for YEARS.
Fehr is shameless… I know a union boss has a job to do and gets paid specifically to be unreasonable, but, come on. MLB’s financial system is antiquated garbage and the illusion of parity is mostly attributable to changes in scouting that the big money teams were slow to adopt… but that’s changing, and we’re going to end up with a superteam-dominated league in another eight or ten years if there’s not some mechanism to keep players moving around.
A fair league needs players to be moving around to keep things balanced but a players association is happy if the top handful of teams can stockpile talent by financially outmuscling everybody.
You guys are 100% correct on the MLB way of doing things. Small-market teams obviously cannot miss on their players, they can have one bad contract burn a team for years. Small-market team will be saddled with the contract they can’t deal and take forever to rebuild the restructure around them where as a team like Boston can deal away a bad contract to say the Dodgers who have an unlimited bankroll and not miss a beat.
I disagree. The MLB is known as the league with the most parity. Small market teams make the playoffs all the time. The Royals, Astros, Rays, Pirates, Indians have all made the playoffs in the past few years.
Fehr is just stating common knowledge. Salary caps restrict players salary, and its his job to look out for the players’ interests.
A random small market team or two pops up into and out of contention every year, but that hardly makes it a level playing field.
The Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, etc. (short of massive incompetence on their part) can compete every single year.
Look at how quickly the Royals window will close. After this season, almost no key players will remain from that team. They did everything right and got lots of breaks and still they could only manage a 4 year window.
That’s not parity. That’s the rich staying rich with an occasional small market team getting a brief taste of success so MLB can say “see, parity”.
But, there will never be a salary cap in baseball because the MLBPA is perhaps the strongest union on the planet and half of the teams do not want it. So, small market teams will just keep taking their revenue sharing hush money to pretend it’s fair and even.
If the Royals, Astros, Rays, Pirates, and Indians having some modicum of success the last few years is your argument in favor of MLB’s financial system you really need to wake up, turn off national sports media, and pay attention. Look at those teams a bit deeper and you’ll find the fatal flaw in MLB’s idea of parity.
Exactly. Any team can always send want to good run and have a good season to make the playoffs and make it look like there is parity in the MLB. However, nobody in a small-market can sustain that for an extended period of time. They usually have to hope that all the stars are aligned properly and you can take a shot at winning it in 1 to 2 or three years span and then watch the pieces start to crumble.
BREAKING! NHLPA intends to adopt NFLPA model of shooting themselves in the face to avoid the foot.
The only anti-cap argument is that the players don’t make as much money, however even that mostly goes to crap in a system with some kind of salary floor. A floor basically makes it mandatory for teams to get in on mid-grade players… the problem with the MLBPA and their old boy Fehr is they really don’t care what happens as long as the top slice of players get as big of a payday as possible. Screw minor leaguers, screw the first six years of service time, screw the vast majority of players who are not headed for a massive payday… as long as the top few teams are always splurging on the top few players, the MLBPA is happy.
No league is perfect but MLB is very antiquated when it comes to the finances. The only thing that keeps the league balanced is the nature of baseball and how scouting and development are much bigger than in other sports.
Ask the Blackhawks about the salary cap. They’ve done nothing but succeed in every aspect that an organization can: scouting, player development, creating a winning couture, etc. Yet they aren’t able to keep a backup goalie on a modest contract on the roster for more than a season at a time. Establishing a soft cap backed by a luxury tax would allow teams who are focused on mission to “go for it” while still fairly compensating teams in smaller markets who just want to tread water and pick off FAs. Compared to the other professional sports, the financial framework of the NHL is a farce. They’d do well to learn a few things about the benefits of capitalism.