HOCKEY IS BACK!!! :clap:
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The NHL and the players' association announced Wednesday that they had reached reached an agreement in principle on the terms of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Details were not released, pending the formal ratification process by NHLPA members and the NHL board of governors.
However, in his Insider Weblog, ESPN The Magazine's E.J. Hradek -- with the help of key sources on both sides of the table -- offered a look at some of the expected terms:
Term: Six years.
Salary rollback: All remaining contracts will be rolled back 24 percent. The rollback will also impact players who must be given qualifying offers for new deals. Those qualifying offers will be based on a player's salary in his last contracted year, minus the 24 percent rollback.
2004-05 contracts: Those contracts will simply disappear from the ledger. Players, however, will be credited with a "year of service." Years of service can determine a player's free-agent status.
Salary cap: Each team must meet a minimum, but not exceed a maximum payroll number. For the 2005-06 season, the high-end threshold will be approximately $37-$39.5 million. The low-end threshold will be between $21.5-$24.5 million.
The numbers are based on the league's projection of revenue for the 2005-06 season. The projection is approximately $1.7-$1.8 billion. According to the league, total revenues for the last complete season (2003-04) were $2.1 billion.
If revenues increase, the salary cap thresholds will increase on a season-to-season basis. If revenues decrease, the salary cap thresholds will decrease on a season-to-season basis.
Buyouts: Teams will be allowed a window of time to buyout player contracts. A player can be bought out for two-thirds of the total remaining value of his contract, minus the 24 percent rollback. A team will not be allowed to re-sign a player they have bought out for a still to be determined amount of time. The money spent to buyout a player will NOT count against the salary cap.
Escrow: A still to be determined percent of players salaries will be placed in an escrow account. In the new deal, league-wide payroll can't exceed 54 percent of total league-wide revenue. If league-wide payroll is determined to be more than 54 percent of revenues, the escrow account will be passed back to the clubs. If league-wide payroll is determined to be less than 54 percent of revenues, the escrow account will go to the players.
Individual team-by-team player cap: No single player can earn more than 20 percent of his team's total payroll. For example, a team with a total team payroll of $37.5 million couldn't pay a single player more than $7.5 million.
Revenue-sharing: The top 10 revenue clubs will contribute to a pool that will be redistributed to the bottom 10 revenue clubs. The NHLPA proposed a similar revenue sharing component in 1994 during the league's first lockout.
Unrestricted free agency: It will remain frozen at age 31 for the first year of the new CBA. It will gradually decrease to age 28 during the life of the deal.
Salary arbitration: The club and the player will both have ability to elect to go to arbitration. Although not confirmed, I believe NHL will go to a baseball-style arbitration system that calls for both sides to submit a salary figure and an arbitrator to decide on one number or the other. There will be a limit on the number of times a team or player can go to arbitration. And, the clubs will have a limited number of times they can walk away from an arbitrator's decision. Under the old system, the clubs could not take players to arbitration.
Qualifying offers: Players making less than $660,000 must be tendered qualifying offers of 110 percent of their final contracted season's salary. Players making between $660,000.01 and $1 million must be tendered qualifying offers of 105 percent of their final contracted season's salary. Players making over $1 million must be tendered qualifying offers of 100 percent of their final contracted season's salary.
Entry level contracts: Entry level contracts will be capped $850,000 per season, with a maximum signing bonus at 10 percent of salary per season. The contracts will be three years in length.
Minimum salary: The minimum salary will be $400,000. Under the old agreement, the league minimum was $175,000.
2006 Winter Olympics: The NHL will shut down operations in February 2006 to allow players to participate in the Winter Olympics. To accommodate the scheduling issues, the league will cancel its 2005-06 All-Star Weekend (scheduled for Phoenix).
thank you nick, i hadn't heard yet. well it is about time. my only fear now is that the rangers Win the sydney crosby draft lottery and ruin the games next big star.
so nick i will be in montreal over labor day, what are the chances of seeing les canadiens training camp or exhibition game?
so the next week should be interesting a lot of players have no contracts and imsure a few teams are over the new cap
hockey is back!!!!!!
frank smarra wrote: thank you nick, i hadn't heard yet. well it is about time. my only fear now is that the rangers Win the sydney crosby draft lottery and ruin the games next big star.
so nick i will be in montreal over labor day, what are the chances of seeing les canadiens training camp or exhibition game?
so the next week should be interesting a lot of players have no contracts and imsure a few teams are over the new cap
hockey is back!!!!!!
In the coming weeks we'll see a lot of UFAs after they start buying out those big contracts. Should be a lot of movement.
frank smarra wrote: thank you nick, i hadn't heard yet. well it is about time. my only fear now is that the rangers Win the sydney crosby draft lottery and ruin the games next big star.
so nick i will be in montreal over labor day, what are the chances of seeing les canadiens training camp or exhibition game?
so the next week should be interesting a lot of players have no contracts and imsure a few teams are over the new cap
hockey is back!!!!!!
Tough to say right now... they will probably release the pre-season schedule later this year... 
well if not i at least want a nice picture of us in front of the Rockey Richard Statue.
the rosters are going to be crazy, i know the Islanders have like 5 guys under contract, kenny jonsson is rumored to be staying in sweden, thats a big loss.
i need to start looking to see who will be available, the league will be wide open, what are detroit, colorado and the rangers going to do they must be way over the cap even with the rollbacks, this will be interesting.
yah im originally from detroit so i always root for them but now that im in florida i get to root for the lightning too. i went to the parade too =)
awesome job finding the details on that. i was bowling and espn was on, they just showed scenes of the lightning winning i didnt know what was going on
frank smarra wrote: well if not i at least want a nice picture of us in front of the Rockey Richard Statue.
the rosters are going to be crazy, i know the Islanders have like 5 guys under contract, kenny jonsson is rumored to be staying in sweden, thats a big loss.
i need to start looking to see who will be available, the league will be wide open, what are detroit, colorado and the rangers going to do they must be way over the cap even with the rollbacks, this will be interesting.
Frank, are you a fellow Islander fan?
With the buyout option included in the CBA I would think teams like the Rangers and other big spenders will opt out of those heavy contracts. I wouldn't be surprised if the Isles used that to get out of Yashin's contract.
i am an Islanders fan, i would love to keep yashin if he would just play to his potential, but obviously if they can dump his contract at a reasonable price i think they Should. we still have a strong Defensive core(jonsson supposedly sint coming back, that hurts , he is very underrated), good but yet unproven goaltending, but we do need scoring. parrish is to streaky, peca hasnt done anything since the darcy tucker thing, and kvasha is kvasha, and we still have to see if Trent Hunter is Consistent, I Think Mattias Weinhadl is for real he will score 25-30 goals consistently as will papineau, once they get some experience that is.(i still think we should have kept Raffi Torres instead of throwing him away to the oilers in that horrible deal for Janne Niinimma(I HATE HIM 
. hopefully mad Mike Milbury will make some smart deals
i am dying to see what teams like the rangers and detroit do to shed some payroll, and will messier finally retire or is he going to demand to be the rangers highest paid player
shit look at all the stuff i wrote about hockey, i love it!
this new agreement shold give teams, like my hometown team, Buffalo Sabres, a fighting chance.
Now if only baseball would do this.
leeharveyoswald1963 wrote: this new agreement shold give teams, like my hometown team, Buffalo Sabres, a fighting chance.
Now if only baseball would do this.
If baseball would have done this, there would have been no team in Washington...!!
Maybe it's fortunate, but nobody in his right mind in Canada was stupid enough to buy the Expos when you see the Yankees with a 200M$ payroll... 
The good thing about this new CBA is that superstar players will actually pick the team they want to go, and not go there because of the money...
Since there is a salary cap where no player can have more than 20% of the payroll, most big teams will offer the exact same salary for that player.
Of course, they will find a way... I can see this from here.. "If you come to New York, you'll get sponsorships from x and y, etc"... but what can you do?!
We Are All On Drugs wrote: are the Stars still in Dallas, or did they move back to Minnesota?!?!?!
there still there, and Minnesota has a new team
That's this idiot commissioner's biggest mistake... don't send hockey where there is no winter... 
They should have done a european division!
Spotnick wrote: That's this idiot commissioner's biggest mistake... don't send hockey where there is no winter...
They should have done a european division!
Hey...what's wrong with having teams in the south???
Last time I checked...Dallas had done alright...won Lord Stanley's Cup and all...blah blah blah...oh...can I show this again???
Well Jeff, sorry to say this, but it's quite stupid to have teams in Carolina (sorry Trevor!) and in, hum, Florida, where people don't give a shit about hockey, instead of Winnipeg and Quebec City were the arenas were full all the time...
Back then, our dollar was 0.62$ US, now it's 0.82$ US, maybe the tide has turned.... who knows!
(Just realize this mean that suddenly, the owners are paying their players 33% less t han what they used to... that's huge!)
Spotnick wrote: Well Jeff, sorry to say this, but it's quite stupid to have teams in Carolina (sorry Trevor!) and in, hum, Florida, where people don't give a shit about hockey, instead of Winnipeg and Quebec City were the arenas were full all the time...
Not mention the difference between cities with ICE and cities WITHOUT ice.
Am I the only one who thinks this threads title is HOOKEY IS BACK!!! every time I see it? 
Church of the KLF wrote: So which teams do you think will have the best shots at the Cup this year?
it is impossible to tell there is going to be a mass player movemenet in the next month, most teams have 4 or five players under contract, some have to get under the cap, so look for a lot of buyouts, mass unrestricted free agency and some forced retirements.
also i agree with nick some of these places have no business having a team, they dont support them unless they are winning, i mean look at tampa, the january before they won the cup they couldnt fill the building with the most exciting team in the league, of course everyone and their mother showed up for the victory parade but big deal.'
as far as i can remember the Nordiques were sold out for years, the jets too. and neither of them won anything.
i would have loved to have gotten rid of two or four teams but that isnt goin gto happen, bettman did go overboard with expansion in the 90's.
so i think its next thursday that they decide who gets the 1st pick(sydney Crosby)
im sure the Poor Rangers will land him
buffalo, columbus, pittsburgh, and the Rags have the best chance to land the 1st pick , but everyone has a shot at him
is he the real deal?
frank smarra wrote:
Church of the KLF wrote: So which teams do you think will have the best shots at the Cup this year?
it is impossible to tell there is going to be a mass player movemenet in the next month, most teams have 4 or five players under contract, some have to get under the cap, so look for a lot of buyouts, mass unrestricted free agency and some forced retirements.
also i agree with nick some of these places have no business having a team, they dont support them unless they are winning, i mean look at tampa, the january before they won the cup they couldnt fill the building with the most exciting team in the league, of course everyone and their mother showed up for the victory parade but big deal.' as far as i can remember the Nordiques were sold out for years, the jets too. and neither of them won anything. i would have loved to have gotten rid of two or four teams but that isnt goin gto happen, bettman did go overboard with expansion in the 90's. so i think its next thursday that they decide who gets the 1st pick(sydney Crosby) im sure the Poor Rangers will land him buffalo, columbus, pittsburgh, and the Rags have the best chance to land the 1st pick , but everyone has a shot at him.
I have a nasty feeling the Rangers are going to win the lottery. I'm sure the NHL would love to have Crosby in NYC.
Rian wrote: Shit. Now all the good swedish hockeyplayers will return to NHL.
well i know from what i hear Kenny Jonsson will not be returning to the N.H.L. Big loss for the Islanders.
also can colorado afford both sakic and Forsberg? impossible under this CBA so maybee forsberg will stay in sweden where he can command a lot of money and play at home, i think he has said he might do that.
frank smarra wrote:
Rian wrote: Shit. Now all the good swedish hockeyplayers will return to NHL.
well i know from what i hear Kenny Jonsson will not be returning to the N.H.L. Big loss for the Islanders.
also can colorado afford both sakic and Forsberg? impossible under this CBA so maybee forsberg will stay in sweden where he can command a lot of money and play at home, i think he has said he might do that.
The Isles D could be a problem this year with Jonsson staying in Sweden and Aucoin and Hamrlik being UFAs.
frank smarra wrote: so i think its next thursday that they decide who gets the 1st pick(sydney Crosby) im sure the Poor Rangers will land him buffalo, columbus, pittsburgh, and the Rags have the best chance to land the 1st pick , but everyone has a shot at him
He dreams to be a Habs though :D
What's funny is that Toronto actually won the showcase draft 
anybody has a shot, but it would be stupid if he ends up in Detroit, Colorado or any team that won division championships recently...
So, the only important thing now is, where will Sydney go?
Hopefully in the east... tired of seeing most stars in the west!
