Nhl Players Moving West

NHL Players Moving East

It was deemed official this past weekend that the NHL will be on lockout due to the new salary cap the league wants to enforce. The players in the league have a different outlook this year as well and it involves moving east. Hockey players in the NHL get 75% of the revenue the league makes and it is very obvious that this current situation is not going to last. There is no way to fund the league if the players are making all of the money. So what happens now? Ratings are very low, the league is not m September 21, 2004

Current Events Paper

arketable right now, and expansion has hurt rather than cured many of the problems in the NHL. That is why the NHL is trying to come to an agreement to place a cap in the league in order to make some much-needed revenue. The players are not having this new idea, and they are now welcoming a different home.

More than 150 players have signed to play in the European leagues. Jaromir Jagr has agreed to play in the Czech Republic for a team named Kladmo. Marcus Naslund has agreed to play in Sweden for Modo. Llya Kovalchuk has signed with AK Bars Kazan in Russia. These are just a few names, but other players are already signed as well and are playing games as we speak. The Russian league has signed 33 NHL players, the Swedish league has signed 30 NHL players, the Czech league has signed 47 NHL players, and the Finnish and Slovakia leagues both signed nine NHL players apiece.

So how can this current situation be resolved? There are few options right now, which makes it seem like this is really going to hurt the league economically. Most of the players in the league have a lockout clause in their contracts making this problem easy for them to deal with. All they have to do is wait out this lockout while being involved with a different league and when the lockout is over they can automatically resume their previous positions in the NHL. This situation however, is not going to be resolved that easily. If the players do not agree to have a salary cap in the NHL then there is not quite an alternative. Where can the league make up this money? If there were a bigger demand for the sport than there would not be a problem. The players are making 75% of the leagues revenue but what would happen if the 25 % the league got was a substantial amount of money because people were actually interested in the sport. That is the only way that the league would be able to continue on the way it was last season.

This is what I believe in my opinion the league will have to adopt in order to not have a luxury tax and a salary cap: "The NHL won't accept a luxury-tax based system. The NHLPA won't accept a salary cap. So the NHL and NHLPA agree to adopt a "payroll parameter" system. It includes