from Jesse Spector of The Sporting News,

If the NHL really wants profit certainty for all 30 of its clubs, and not just certainty of exceptionally high profits for its most powerful owners, it cannot treat all 30 teams as financial equals when they very clearly are not. This is not the NFL, where the main source of revenue is a massive national television contract, and local TV rights, one of the NHL’s greatest sources of both revenue and financial disparity, don’t exist outside of the preseason.

Instead of trying to apply a league-wide salary structure, the NHL should base the salary cap and floor on the revenues of individual teams, after revenue-sharing payments have been made. In addition to disconnecting small-market teams from a system in which they have no hope of keeping pace, those teams would have an incentive to grow their business, both in order to be able to put a more competitive team on the ice and to increase their profit margins. Fans in those markets also would have more reason to spend money, as they would be legitimately supporting their favorite team.

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