Excessive contracts
Many players began to receive inflated contracts. Examples that immediately come to mind: Drew Dowty, Eric Karlsson, Hayes, Skinner, Spurgeon. Such contracts break the market, after which other hockey players also begin to overestimate themselves. But at least these players got contracts after spending a lot of time in the league, now young people get fat contracts, why is that? After all, the teams will have problems, the ceiling is not rubber, and pay a lot of players of prime age and young people together will be harder and harder. The League did so because the growing revenues that the NHL management is talking about are inflated to some extent. The average age of the fans is inexorably growing, and there are not many young people among the fans. Where do young people spend a lot of time? That's right, on social networks, where NHL veterans don't hang out. To do this, we need new stars - the players of the late 90's, the beginning of the zeroes. Who lead an active life in social networks, thereby attracting huge masses of young people. If you do not make now popular and media players among teenagers, you can lose the growth of profits in a few years, and then lockout can not be avoided.
Of course, if you look at the percentage of how many these contracts are eaten from the caps of their teams, the figures will be similar to those times when the ceiling was 60 million, where the salary of 7 million a year eating similar interest from under the cap. Previously, with a ceiling of 60 million, a contract with 7 million a year was quoted as the current 11 million with modern ceilings. But the problem is that in addition to the prime players, the green youth are now claiming fat contracts.
I agree that the league is taking steps to rejuvenate the fan sector in a very narrow way and without a clearly visible plan. Spontaneity can be seen in all actions. At times, the leadership must now have sacrificed many millions to make salary ceilings higher. After all, the imbalance is obvious - young players receive more than the prime players who signed contracts 3-4 years ago. The internal environment in the teams suffers. Contracts should have been made shorter long ago. Then the number of transfers, new signings, which the public loves so much, would have increased. Premium and young players would get proportional contracts. Yes, the system of short contracts is not perfect, but offer something that could solve modern problems.
Horse escrow
Players lose a huge part of their salaries by paying taxes. In addition, there is an escrow that can keep you around 8-15% of your salary. This is not yesterday's problem. It's a long time old. And in 2022 it will be hard for the league to reach an agreement with the union without any major changes in this matter. Escrow needs to be modernized. However, the uncles of businessmen in the NHL are not used to getting used to it. This will be the main reason for a possible lockout in 2022.
The NHL is primarily a business
Right, the NHL is also the number one business in the world, because it is a business. And so historically, Americans have been able to do business better than many in the world. But rich men in jackets should make concessions. Modern players are more material. They will not let themselves be robbed.
It is necessary to take an example with the NBA, to adopt something, to transform ideas under hockey. The NHL management should help the clubs in every possible way when concluding telecontracts. Some teams have horribly unprofitable contracts. In general, the NHL's television policy is weak. Work in this direction also began, for example, we all know Yandex signed a contract with the league to show all the matches. Other giants such as Amazon and YouTube planned to do the same. Now there are a lot of opportunities on the Internet to popularize and earn money for the NHL, the main thing is to use these opportunities correctly.
It is logical that not to raise the ceiling to 120 million at once. It is necessary to raise incomes, which is also not done at a click. As I said earlier, it is necessary to rejuvenate the public. But raising the ceiling will solve all the problems with overpayment to the current young players.
General managers, on the other hand, shouldn't give long-term contracts with fat payroll to players who have just begun to prove something. You don't have to spend money on the right or left just to keep a star in your team. In general, everything will come back to you like a boomerang when there are new promising stars, and you will not have enough money for them, because you overpaid others earlier. You'll have to give up on someone, and teamwork won't grow out of it all. Doing business then you need to competently, not through the back seat. Youth should also moderate their appetites as if every 20-year-old young man will want to earn after 100-150 matches from 8 million and above, then all of these young men will not be enough, the league is not rubber, and part of the talented guys will sit without contracts or play for food. I don't want to call the players caught on fire, as the league management did during the last lockout. Everything should be in order. Which at the moment is not on either side.