That sounds about right, but then there's something about percentage increases or something like that - all it says to me is that this is simply not going to fly. It's an interesting counter offer - there's a lot going for it, and I do think it provides a better framework than what the owners were talking about, but it needs a lot of tweaking.

I can't help but wonder if there's a way to make an advanced metrics fantasy league work. I'm not sure it could, but some of you might be able to figure it out.

following the Can-Rus series (kinda), and the only **** Ive heard about Tom Wilson (oh the Caps #16 overall pick don't worry about it) is how he's run into some guy and gotten chucked into the box for 2 minutes... on multiple occasions. Fantastic. We drafted Cam ****ing Janssen 16 overall.

...with teravainen still on the board. ****ing mcphee.

Go Canada!

Andy Strickland
‏@andystrickland
Part of NHLPA proposal allows teams to buy/sell draft picks and cap space from other #NHL clubs. How much would a 1st overall pick be worth?

RANGERS GOING TO BUY THE 1ST OVERALL EVERY YEAR WOOHOOOOOOOOOO

I like this. Not only is it a good idea, but the potential for trade pwnage and our lulz is quadrupled.

One thing that should be restricted though, is selling lottery picks of the same year draft (post-Jan 1st). The incentive for tanking has gotten larger.

wow, wtf

Holy ****, Toronto will have draft picks.

selling draft picks would be horrible. how many of these fly by night owners the NHL find would sell their team's draft picks for his own profit

Oilers aren't selling. Try again in 2018

Pretty sure the way it would work is that X cap space from one team would move to another.

So if the cap is 50, philly gives the oilers 5m in cap space for yakupov, and now philly has 45m for next season, while the oilers have 55m. No money would actually change hands.

If I'm wrong and it's the alternative, I would HATE it. We'd turn into the NBA.

Agree with this, although I do find the option of trading cap space intriguing. Gives smaller market teams that won't spend to the cap assets right off the bat, granted it hurts them from acquiring big name players (which they probably wouldn't have had much of a shot at anyway). On the other hand, I wouldn't put it past a team like the Flyers or Rangers to exploit this mercilessly by acquiring tons of cap space from a team like the Coyotes and then going nuts in free agency. On second thought, maybe it's best to keep things the way they are.

selling it for $$$ that goes into the owner's pocket would indeed be horrible, but that's an obvious circumvention of the salary cap. any arbitrator would rule against it. moreover, salary dump trades already make all of this possible on a smaller scale, and the picks are not being valued enough. especially lottery picks.

Salary dump trades have to take into account the salary floor. It's not a loophole on any level.

Also, if it's a swap of cash, I don't see how it doesn't go into the owner's pockets, directly or indirectly. What would constitute obvious circumvention in this instance compared to not besides the totally absurd?

you can buy salary cap space?

lol jesus

it is a loophole. consider a player with $1.1m remaining that you don't want to pay, but are willing to part with a pick. so you trade that player and the pick for a piece costing only $100k. voila, you have just sold your pick for $1m. it has nothing to do with the salary floor.

salary cap/floor is tied to the revenues, not the budgets. cash compensation is hockey related revenue for the team that receives the cash. that much is established. but since team budgets are not open, you can pretty much assume it's coming out of the owner's own pocket.

ETA: to be strict, it's better to consider the players you are trading as useless to the team. for example, AHLers who are useless to the organization at the top level. but this can happen even with teams who are playoff-bound.

because there isn't an open market for picks, they are currently undervalued, or rather their value is decreased due to a liquidity trap. this is really a shame, as it's becoming harder to compete without some solid players getting paid ELC money. so the value of picks and prospects who can contribute should be going up.

Buying/selling draft picks is AIDS

no more so than your garden-variety capitalism.

What percentage of teams with the top 5 picks usually even care about cap space? I don't see many of the top picks being traded anyway. I think the mid1st and onward picks could be traded to the worse teams though. We'd probably see crappy teams stockpiling picks and the good teams able to plug some holes they otherwise couldn't. But I'd imagine the cap increase would only be for one season so it still would probably only help teams close to the cap plug a hole not sign superstars. So it could actually create some parity in the long run or at least help the worse teams get better a bit faster.

Both me, you, and A5 are making a lot of assumptions about how it could work - there's been a lot of chatter. The NHLPA isn't releasing the full proposal so we'll never know.

A5: I did see that buying/selling cap space would be limited to +/- $4M per team.

I don't think picks are undervalued. What happened is that prospects shot up in value once the salary cap + rookie compensation limits were instituted, and so draft picks to some extent lost value. The issue with draft picks is that they have an X% chance of becoming a useful player, and even that generally isn't for several years.

Right, and picks are the most common ways of acquiring those players in the future. A contributor on an ELC is better than a second round pick, but maybe not better that a top-3 pick in a draft that has yakupov, etc.

If teams are allowed to sell picks for cash or cap room, the pick value should increase for the reasons I explained. I probably should have said picks are undervalued by some gms/owners (lolBurke).

Anyway, this is all a thought exercise because as you said we don't know the full proposal. So let's not assume it's a bad idea provided that the owners can't just pocket the money, like it happens in baseball.

Bettman sounds pissed off today.

We really need to get #FIREBETTMAN trending on twitter.

It worked for the firing of Ron Wilson. Don't underestimate the power Canada has. If we can get FIRE BETTMAN to trend #1 in the world, he will feel the pressure.