Frank E said:
The problem I have with this argument is two-fold.
Firstly, according to the current CBA, these money losing teams still have to hit the salary floor, sell tickets, and try to improve their individual profitability. So the fact that they're investing in marquis players is key to their profitability, both short and long term. So this part of the article, in my opinion, is a little ridiculous.
Well, leaving aside the issue of Jordan Staal as a marquis player, I think the bigger problem there is that the teams you're talking about already have "marquis" players that they're investing in. Carolina, absent Jordan Staal, are paying Eric Staal and Alex Semin and Cam Ward marquis prices. Minnesota, without their two giant UFA contracts, also has three players earning more than 6 million per year annually(The Maple Leafs, by comparison, have one such player).
So I think it's a false premise to say that either team needed to sign these contracts to establish an ability to invest in high priced players. Minnesota in particular is a team that is now at the very upper reaches of the cap, spending more money than the Cup winning Kings did.
The track record of signing big FA deals as a means to improve your team and reap the profitability that goes with it is not a sure thing. It's a short cut. To a lot of people these deals strike people as money losers. That's the criticism. They're entering into deals that
aren't beneficial to them financially in the long and short term. That they're putting winning in the short term ahead of profitability and then crying about how they're not profitable.
That's the issue a lot of people have with the league. That it only seems as though some owners care about the dollars and cents of it when it comes time to negotiate with the PA.
Frank E said:
Secondly, the league isn't talking about trying to break even. If 18 out of 30 are losing money, that's a definite structural problem.
I think this is where most teachers would ask you to show your work. Are these teams being run specifically to show a profit? Are they spending a proper amount of money on non-player related expenses? Are they being run particularly well?
To simply hold up the NHL's numbers and say that something is structurally wrong with the way players are compensated strikes me as giving them a license to run their businesses as poorly as they want because any losses can then be attributed to a structural problem with the CBA as opposed to any of their own decisions.