Stu Cowan: NHL likes to keep fans in the dark about player salaries

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However it was Gary Bettman who made league all in regards to the wage cap and shifted focus from targets and assists to how a lot gamers are making.

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Stu Cowan • Montreal Gazette

Revealed Jun 15, 2024 • Final up to date 1 hour in the past • 4 minute learn

Screenshot of Capfriendly.com, which is able to not be open to the general public in July.

Gary Bettman prefers that followers don’t know the way a lot cash NHL gamers are making.

So the NHL commissioner might be thrilled that the Washington Capitals reached a deal final weekend to buy CapFriendly and that the very detailed salaries listed on the implausible web site for each gamers and groups in relation to the wage cap will not be accessible to the general public as of early July.

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“The NHL believes that they shouldn’t be within the enterprise of publishing these things, as a matter of reality, I’ve been advised a number of instances that the connection between the NHL and CapFriendly was icy,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman stated on his 32 Ideas Podcast.

“The NHL frowns on the existence of web sites like this one, although they need to be doing it themselves, they contemplate it proprietary info, so the Capitals couldn’t preserve it open in the event that they wished to,” Friedman added.

When ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski requested Bettman again in 2015 about the potential for the NHL creating its personal web site itemizing participant salaries, the commissioner answered: “I don’t assume it’s a useful resource we have to present as a result of I’m unsure followers are as centered on what gamers make as they’re about their efficiency on the ice.”

Assume once more, Gary.

It was Bettman who made the NHL all in regards to the wage cap and shifted followers’ focus from targets and assists to how a lot gamers are making. Bettman and the house owners had been keen to lock the gamers out for the complete 2004-05 season to be able to lastly get a hard and fast wage cap that was set at US$39 million per staff for the 2005-06 season. The cap has grown to US$88 million for subsequent season.

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Whereas participant salaries have grown, the worth of NHL franchises has skyrocketed. Geoff Molson and his group paid a reported $575 million for the Canadiens and the Bell Centre in 2009. The franchise was valued at US$2.3 billion final December by Forbes.

Participant agent Allan Walsh famous on X (previously Twitter) final month that whereas NHL revenues grew 340 per cent from 2001 to 2024, salaries for the highest gamers didn’t develop very a lot. The very best-paid gamers for the 2000-01 season had been Peter Forsberg (US$11 million), Jaromir Jagr (US$10.033 million), Paul Kariya (US$10 million) and Pavel Bure (US$10 million). The very best-paid gamers subsequent season, in line with CapFriendly, might be Auston Matthews (US$16.7 million), Nathan MacKinnon (US$16.5 millon) and Elias Pettersson (US$14.5 million).

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The NHL has an extended historical past of wanting to maintain participant salaries a secret as a result of it’s good for enterprise.

The late, nice Purple Fisher gained his first of three Nationwide Newspaper Awards in 1970 for a five-part sequence he wrote about NHL participant salaries and advantages. Fisher obtained a monetary report introduced by NHL president Clarence Campbell to the board of governors that acknowledged: “Although our return to the gamers final season was at an all-time low, our income had been at an all-time excessive.”

The sequence embarrassed the NHL, which acquired some revenge by having Fisher lose his common slot on Hockey Evening in Canada intermissions.

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In 1989, when Chris Chelios signed what was then the richest contract in Canadiens historical past, a part of the deal was that he wasn’t allowed to reveal how a lot he was being paid. Fisher reported Chelios would obtain a base wage of $575,000 with the rest of his wage, in all probability one other $200,000 yearly, paid on a deferral foundation.

In January 1990, Fisher acquired his palms on the entire record of salaries for each participant within the NHL and so they had been printed in The Gazette earlier than the NHLPA deliberate on releasing the figures. The NHLPA was going to launch the record on the gamers’ request and Fisher reported that the Canadiens had been the one staff to vote in opposition to the thought with many gamers feeling the discharge of wage figures was an invasion of privateness. The NHLPA appropriately believed it was in the perfect curiosity of gamers going into contract negotiations to know what everybody else was making.

Final September, I wrote a column and did a Q&A narrative on Jamie Davis, the primary man behind the CapFriendly web site.

“In relation to hockey, actually each determination made within the league must be compliant regarding the wage cap,” Davis stated.

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“Due to that, there’s a pure curiosity to followers — for my part — in understanding precisely the place each membership is as a result of that provides them the power to have a well-understood rationalization on what they might do in the event that they had been within the footwear of a staff’s administration,” Davis added.

It’s good to see Davis and his two brothers, Ryan and Christoper, money in on all their onerous work constructing the web site and they’re going to proceed to work for the Capitals after the brand new deal is finalized.

However, sadly, the CapFriendly wage info will not be accessible to NHL followers.

Walsh put in greatest when he wrote on X: “No league persistently stands their followers up and kicks them within the balls just like the NHL. If CapFriendly had been on the market, the league ought to have purchased it and integrated it into NHL.com. This ain’t rocket science (apart from some individuals I assume).”

scowan@postmedia.com

twitter.com/StuCowan1

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