tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4959804955489709052.post680716189555024406..comments2023-11-05T04:14:41.336-05:00Comments on Hockey Plumber: The Lockout Did Much More To Save Than Enslave: There Is Little Excuse For FailureThe Plumberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03682781203391167629noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4959804955489709052.post-63231021785119199092010-01-28T14:25:14.442-05:002010-01-28T14:25:14.442-05:00Yeah a few bloggers are touching on this issue. Mo...Yeah a few bloggers are touching on this issue. Money rules no matter how you try and stop it, players go where the money is. Who knows, maybe Atl will end up with a few good prospects out of the deal. <br />Jeremy<br /><a href="http://howtohockey.com/" rel="nofollow">Hockey Tips</a>Jeremyinchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08675859213261730525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4959804955489709052.post-50459412017927622562010-01-26T20:03:05.660-05:002010-01-26T20:03:05.660-05:00The lockout was about exactly what is happening wi...The lockout was about exactly what is happening with Kovalchuk. If you reduce free agency ages - as was done in the CBA negotiated in the lockout - you will see more players moving as free agents when they are young enough to make a difference.<br /><br />Before the lockout, some teams bought a lot of free agents, but unless they already had a good young core to win already, it didn't help. You got teams like the New York Rangers leading the league in payroll and missing the playoffs 8 years in a row. The Rangers (and other big spending teams had no advantage at all. They couldn't buy wins. <br /><br />Sure teams that drafted well eventually wound up with big payrolls by keeping their talent as they matured, but they got the chance because they drafted well and not because they bought a winner. It looked like any market could do this - Denver, Dallas and East Rutherford did - while New York, Toronto and Los Angeles could not. In 2004, the best guess was Tampa Bay and Ottawa might rule the future and that was bad for the NHL. Nobody cared about Tampa and Ottawa. Big cities had to dominate to get media interest. New York had to be able to buy a winner. Reduce free agency ages and they could.<br /><br />Sure it came with a salary cap. That made the smaller markets who were giving up a chance to win happy. They could make more money.<br /><br />A salary cap means the Rangers cannot buy all the free agents, but they don't have to. They only have to buy one Kovalchuk (or Crosby, Malkin etc when they come available) and that makes a huge difference. Those big markets will always get the premiere free agents. They can offer opportunity that small markets cannot. Kovalchuk (for example) makes more in non-NHL related advertising in New York than he ever could in Atlanta. Its the same way Gretzky got ads and a saturday Night live appearance in Los Angeles that he never could have got in Edmonton.<br /><br />The NHL CBA has accomplished some things. Tampa Bay and Ottawa were broken up. The recession has hurt the ability of smallest market teams financially - but they are better off with this CBA and its revenue sharing. The best players have yet to come onto the market in part due to much longer contracts than expected (that takes Ovechkin off the market). <br /><br />Players like Ilya Kovalchuk coming to the big markets was an intended consequence. That is why free agency ages dropped.<br /><br />The NHL was full of misinformation about why the lockout occurred. There was no intention to let small markets keep teams together. Salary caps cannot accomplish that. They force more player movement. Reducing free agency ages cannot accomplish that. It forces more player movement. This CBA was not intended to keep Kovalchuk in Atlanta. It has no mechanism to do that and many to prevent it.<br /><br />The CBA is doing what it was supposed to do in this case. Here it is being judged by its ability to perform the lies that was promised with it that were never intended to be delivered.The Puck Stops Herehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12476848399356136470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4959804955489709052.post-9935209247051712032010-01-26T14:09:55.851-05:002010-01-26T14:09:55.851-05:00yeah, absolutely ridiculous. good piece by you.yeah, absolutely ridiculous. good piece by you.Dmitriy Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07860615287227038168noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4959804955489709052.post-17968187457622350572010-01-26T13:25:07.446-05:002010-01-26T13:25:07.446-05:00Good writing. What he also fails to mention is the...Good writing. What he also fails to mention is the disastrous gming of this team by don waddell. By mortgaging the future to lose 4 in a row in the playoffs a couple years back that robbed the thrashers of the pieces they need to help kovie. Oh and lets ignore the fact that the thrashers had to trade Dany Heatley because of the accident. Better GM moves by the Thrashers Brass and it would be a much different picture.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06614675085859634852noreply@blogger.com