from David Shoalts of the Globe and Mail,

So far, the players are only willing to reduce the rate at which their salaries grow. They have offered (on the assumption revenue will continue to grow at 7 per cent a year) to take the equivalent of a gradual reduction of their share of revenue from 57 per cent to 52 per cent and change over five years. (That is a simplified summation of the offer, as it is more complicated than that, but your agent has only a faint grasp of high-school mathematics.)

It’s frustrating that anyone who has talked at length with those on the owners’ side knows they would take a simple 50-50 split in revenue under the present system if the National Hockey League Players’ Association were to offer it.

Similarly, there is a strong belief the players would agree to a 50-50 share if all the salary the owners saved were distributed to the bottom 10 or 12 teams on the revenue chart.

Using the $3.3-billion in revenue from 2011-12 as an example, if the players’ share were reduced to 50 per cent from 57 per cent, the 30 owners would collectively save $240-million. That means the bottom 10 revenue teams could each receive $24-million, which would double what the worst of them got in the limited revenue-sharing under the old collective agreement.

But there is little incentive for the rich teams to do that because it would mean they couldn’t spend more than their poor relations and would still have to fork over more money to them. However, what if the league were to adopt a soft salary cap that would allow the rich guys to spend more on payroll as long as they paid a luxury tax that would be distributed to the poorer teams?

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