Has the salary cap gone too far? [1/2]

[Victor 11,043]

The VHL's salary cap is notoriously tough, with most players' lack of real interest in testing free agency creating a real risk of teams being able to stock up on a couple draft classes and dominating for eight seasons. Although never enough to appease GMs who do want to dominate for eight seasons, the balance has largely always been just about good enough to keep going. However, with consecutive deep draft classes and despite expansion, the increasing feeling is that the current cap system has become outdated.

 

I don't personally have a clear solution but I am starting to sympathise with the sentiment and not necessarily because I am a GM now. Just today I was looking at the rosters of the teams in the Season 64 playoffs and with 4 of the 5 teams (minus Seattle) still contending for the cup going into Season 66, it's quite interesting to see how few players these teams have managed to retain from just two seasons ago.

 

Vancouver (5)

Beau Louth, Rauno Palo, Jake Davis, Marvin Harding, Konstantin Mulligan

 

The retirements of Colton Rayne and Casey Jones had little to do with cap, while moving out Tristan Iseult this off-season was an intended improvement in goal. Apart from that though, Quebec/Vancouver has probably had the toughest time with the cap over the past few seasons, committed to building up a healthy prospect while trying to compete simultaneously. Just this off-season, Jorgon Weyed and Samuel Gate had to be moved out, in addition to the countless prospects who have had to be moved on in anticipation of cap issues.

 

Toronto (4)

Evan R. Lawson, Oyorra Arroyo, Luc-Pierre Lespineau-Lebrunnette, Tzuyu

 

The Legion's approach to team-building and allergy to draft picks makes wheeling and dealing necessary, therefore significant roster changes season to season are not massively surprising. They would have been planning for the retirements of Stopko, Warlock and free agency departure of Ironside regardless. Nonetheless, just this season Toronto had to trade Chace Trepanier due to cap considerations.

 

Riga (4)

Podrick Cast, Edwin Preencarnacion, Ryan Kastelic, Kallis Kriketers

 

Riga would have been preparing for cap hell for several seasons, but it is still startling to see so few of their old regulars still together, despite having won the cup just three seasons ago and remaining a contender since. This season was judgement day for GM Benjamin Zeptenbergs, trading the majority of the old core and pivoting to a team built around S65-S66 draftees with only the absolute top older players being retained.

 

Helsinki (6)

Julian Borwinn, Kronos Bailey, Dan Montgomery, Jesse Wilson, Sidney Crosby, Alexander Pepper

 

The majority of the Titans' departures were out of their control, with the retirements of Johnsson, Louth, Slipher, Kane, losing Nano to the expansion draft and not being able to re-sign The Charm due to GM player rules. That was probably a blessing given they still had to make several cap-shedding trades in the last two off-seasons, losing players such as Joey Boucher and Roctrion King. Going into this season with a forward core dominated by rookies is certainly unusual for a team coming off back-to-back finals appearances.

 

For context, the standard roster size for most of the VHL's history (including S64) is 11 players, meaning that most of these contenders have not been able to keep together even half of their squads in the last two off-seasons. Is this an issue? Not from a trading perspective after one of the most active off-seasons in living memory and not from a parity point of view, given how unpredictable S66 will almost certainly turn out to be. But from a team-building standpoint, it might be bordering on unhealthy and possibly too much of a balancing act for GMs.

[Banackock 8,160]

Not a fan of the current cap etc  

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

This is a feature of a good salary cap, not a bug.

 

Look at NHL teams - you build around your core and have to continue to supplant your complimentary talent with cheap draft picks. You're not supposed to be able to just keep everyone that you draft after you have 9 1st round draft picks over 3 seasons.

[Renomitsu 934]

Review - I always think that a good evaluative piece gets people to disagree with you and ask why. Since flyersfan did exactly that and both points are valid, I think that means a job well done. Tracking this many roster moves/retainees is no easy task, and I can appreciate the effort you put into this piece.

 

Like flyersfan is saying, I do wonder if player mobility will increase with more intense contract negotiations; we've already seen teams force fire sales of their veterans because of cap problems, which you see in most professional leagues nowadays, but we have to carefully balance that with players' desire to feel wanted.

[Victor 11,043]

Note to self: this is for Pavlov