There’s only 12 players per team, there’s no salary cap, stars have a much greater impact on the game and their league generates billions more than the NHL per year. Not surprising at all. I don’t feel bad for anyone in the NHL making their paltry millions annually in comparison.
Hit the nail on the head.
Also the CBA that they have is extremely top heavy so guys are getting these wild deals while most role players are making peanuts in comparison.
NHL with all its faults does a good job of making competitive salaries for a majority of players and avoids having situations where 3 or 4 guys make up like 85% of the salary.
Something something maple leafs something something
Edit: I made a boo-boo with my maths but I made a low hanging fruit leafs joke so do with that what you will
The games, and salaries, are different by their very nature. In the NBA, two or three guys are all that is needed to make a top 3 seed in a playoff. The rest can be replacement level or worse. It’s not like that in the NHL. Those guys get the big money.
It’s more nuanced than that. NBA teams are moving away from the super team model and will continue to do so with the new CBA and ultra severe penalties for teams that go way over the luxury tax apron.
Lakers last year are actually a good example. Once a functional unit that knew what they were doing (love ya russ but you werent working with lebron) was put around anthony davis and lebron they turned a subpar team into a deep playoff finishing team.
Two random examples from good NBA teams:
https://www.spotrac.com/nba/cleveland-cavaliers/cap/
https://www.spotrac.com/nba/milwaukee-bucks/cap/
The lowest paid player on Cleveland makes $2M and the lowest paid player on Milwaukee makes $1.2M. Also bench guys in the NBA are a bit different, they will literally never play unless it's in the final 5 minutes of a blowout game. When teams go on playoff runs they pretty much only use the same 8 players for their entire run.
Idk about peanuts. Paul Reed is getting 15 million dollars a year. When old guys can’t find a good deal, they often take an MLE that comes in at like 5.5-7.5 million.
It's pretty expensive to be above the hard cap and gets more expensive for every consecutive year. They also can't sign UFAs over the soft cap. A couple years ago the Warriors extended a player on a $10Mish deal and in real dollars it was over $40m. Also in the season after the next one the cap rules are going to change and going over the soft cap is going to be seriously unmanageable. Including losing a 1st round pick if you're over it for 3 out of 5 years
There is a salary cap, as well as a cap on the maximum any one player can make. Brown had to hit the "super-max" criteria in order to get his contract.
Because of the small rosters, the NBA draft only has two rounds. By the time you get deep in the second round, less than half the picks will ever see an NBA floor. So it's a hugely star-driven and not team-driven sport.
And minor league baseball players. Some of them get literal poverty wages. MLB lobbied for players in the minor leagues to be exempt from minimum wage laws.
Iirc the minor league just created their own union. I think their salaries increased with that. The Astros started providing housing for players in their minor league affiliates a few years ago and I think every team besides 1 or 2 have followed suit. It’s not all fixed but I think it’s trending in the right direction.
I think you’re looking at the inflation adjusted figures there.
Top 5 in the NBA in 1999 made $13m - $18.5m
https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/1998-1999/
> I think you’re looking at the inflation adjusted figures there.
>
> Top 5 in the NBA in 1999 made $13m - $18.5m
>
> https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/1998-1999/
A year earlier Jordan was making $33MM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-paid_NBA_players_by_season
Edit: here is a good side by side by year:
* [nhl](http://www.puckreport.com/2013/01/nhl-highest-paid-players-by-year.html)
* [nba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-paid_NBA_players_by_season)
I don't know how many times people have to criticize the NHL's marketing for them to change something. They are being called out by the TNT basketball crew, twitter, pro wrestlers, even Snoop Dogg.
NHL and NHLPA negotiated a CBA that enriches the lower tier players at the expense.of the elite talent. Players like Jagr were getting paid $11m per year more than 20 years ago while the league minimum was 175K and the average was $1.7M. But since the salary cap players like Crosby and Ovechkin have been relatively underpaid while 3rd and 4th line players are getting paid 1/4 as much as the super stars. League min salary is now 775K and league average player is around $3.5M while McDavid gets $12.5M.
Credit the hockey team culture, or the threat of European leagues poaching 3rd and 4th line talent but never having a chance at stars because star players want to play against the best of the best to earn glory , or whatever, but the NHL pays out down the roster and not just it's elite players.
I think that makes some sense when he still only plays a 1/3 of the game. The NBA stars play what, 4/5ths of the game? And 1/20 players vs 1/12 or even fewer if you only look at game time.
Definitely agree it's a cultural thing. It's probably as much culture as it is CBA related. I think it's a Canadian thing that has made its way into the wider hockey culture. It's not only Canadian guys that have participated - it's been a thing in New Jersey with non-Canadians for instance.
But it's just always been a thing where the main guy (Crosby, McDavid, Bergeron, MacKinnon, Stamkos) is expected to give back and share with his teammates, and in return the other stars all get in line behind him and no one tries to overtake him in salary. Well in Stamkos' case, he got overtaken, but Point/Kucherov/Vasy all took less because he did it first. There's this self-enforced salary equalization that happens so that the lesser guys on the roster get to stay.
That’s a big misrepresentation, it’s not a real cap like the NHL. It’s $5.2 million per team but in most cases your 3 best (and usually highest paid) players don’t count against the cap.
The team with the smallest payroll Montreal pays about 9 million in salary, and there are about a dozen teams in the 9-13 million range to reach “1 Mcdavid.” Also Toronto FCs payroll, who is one of the highest, is about the same as both of their contracts combined… not 5. Their two DPs are each making $6+ million.
[Take a look here](https://www.spotrac.com/mls/cap/)
There is also Targeted Allocation Money, and General Allocation Money (TAM and GAM) which can be used to buy down the cap impact of a player.
i.e. A player is making 15k a week, the team can buy that down so it only has 7.5k cap impact. Meaning that the actual salaries are going to be more than the cap even excluding DPs.
MLS can have three players whose salary is not included in the salary cap, such as Messi's annual salary in Miami is 55 million US dollars, which is almost 5 times the annual salary of McDavid
They are comparable in many ways: they play in often the same major cities and in similar sized arenas with similar sized crowds. They are both top tier and are considered one of the four major sports in the US (and Canada), and having a team elevates a city’s status.
Given this, comparing popularity, revenue, and player pay is completely reasonable. There are certainly factors that are unique to each league that affect player pay, but that doesn’t disqualify discussion.
I understand if an NHL executive makes the comparison because the NBA is a direct competitor for viewers. When (hockey)fans start this self deprecating dick measuring contest, that's bonkers to me. Completely different structure to rosters, completely different landscape globally.
The only way the NHL will ever be on par with the NBA Moneywiese is if the latter completely shits the bed. I don't give a crap about basketball but there is just no way hockey can ever be as popular worldwide.
You can count on one hand the number of genuine, marketable personalities in the NHL.
The NBA, nearly every player is a marketable personality.
It doesn't help that the NHLs best players are also the most boring human beings on the planet. Hopefully kids like Zegras and Hughes can turn that around.
Dude finally someone says it. I get brain rot watching any hockey interview or press conference. It's a cess pool of clichès and non answers. People complain about the NHLs marketing, and while all star games and high talent vs high talent would help A TON, nobody who doesn't already like hockey is gonna tune in because fucking Joe Schmoe #45 whose apparently the best hockey player in the country just answered "Why do you think you're the better team over X?" by saying "Well uh yeah, they're clearly some guys who wanna, you know, play hard and win. But uh basically we just have a good spirit back there and uh, we just wanna get out there and put some pucks in the net."
Up until recently, individualism was shunned. NO ONE wanted players to show even an ounce of personality. This was hurting the league from a marketing standpoint. I've said it plenty of times before, but the smartest move (for things off the ice) that the NHL has ever made, was the deal they signed with Turner. NBA on TNT is an absolute event. You get a healthy mix of Xs/Os, banter, and discussions about things unrelated to the sport. This is the blueprint, and if the NHL on TNT can emulate even 2% of what the NBA does, it's a major win for the league as far as visibility.
Mbappe was about to make as much as 10 teams combined. They market the NHL like shit. MLS will surpass it, if it hasn't already. I love hockey but they do a terrible job building the game.
Yes the NHL does a terrible job marketing, but that Mbappe offer was pure Saudi sport washing money and really not a fair threshold to compare North American sports to.
Marketing isn’t everything. Hockey is a very inaccessible sport for the masses and only a part of the culture in pretty small (population wise) parts of the world. It’s much easier getting people who have grown up playing a sport interested, over trying to get 30 year olds that have never seen ice.
> Hockey is a very inaccessible sport for the masses
Inaccessible as in, expensive to get gear and somewhere to practice/play?
Or inaccessible as in, tv blackouts resulting in large swaths of the population never being able to see a hockey game?
I think both apply to your statement actually.
Primarily the first. Playing as a kid is way more reliant on who your parents are and where you live, over if you want to. Can’t say the same about soccer or basketball
The first has to be the biggest reason. Looking back now, especially that I have a kid. I have no idea how I played hockey. I was raised by my grandma living off her pension, but she loved hockey, And I played AAA, so add hotels and all the extra fees. I would love to out my kid in hockey but I just can't afford it. So he's playing lacrosse.
I think if you aren't born into hockey, it's a very hard game to pick up and get into if you don't understand it
Even now Mbappé has a loyalty bonus that's about to kick in worth £60M. But then again, soccer is just soccer. There's money to be had everywhere. It's a globally recognized sport and easily accessible as basketball.
Hockey not so much.
Lot of people won't care if they don't have the ability to actually play said sport.
Just be glad Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs aren't buying NHL teams and that the CCP isn't making NHL hockey the official sport of denying that Taiwan is a country. Money ruins everything. Why would real sports fans WANT better marketing?
And look how it changed since then, went from a struggling league to one with 500 million dollar expansion fees, teams that win CCL, and Messi coming off a World Cup; MLS is available worldwide through Apple and is the world’s most popular sport. The US is hosting Copa America and the World Cup in the best four years. By 2030 MLS and the NHL will be comparably sized leagues
Messi at 36 is still one of the best players in the world and the best player in the MLS. Plus Messi has a bigger global reach than Beckham and MLS has better marketability than the NHL
And they all said that when Beckham came to the US... and MLS is still a small blip on the radar.
Soccer has been 5-10 years away from exploding in North America for as long as I've been a live. Nothing against soccer but MLS entering the company of the Big 4 sport leagues here... not happening.
Did you follow Ligue 1 or the World Cup last year?Sure he’s not prime Messi just embarrassing entire 11s single-handedly, but he’s still easily one of the best players on earth and his name (which is trademarked hilariously) and image are probably worth more than the entirety of NHL or MLS’s brands. No hate on the NHL, it’s my favourite major sports league, but top footballers are in a whole other world to anything hockey related.
For some perspective, he’s arguably still in his prime (he’s still dominant regardless of any regression), and he’s in the conversation with only about 2 others for best player in history, in the most popular sport in history.
If by slightly different you actually mean slightly different then yes.
The other commenter explained the Messi is still very very good. For what it's worth in FIFA he is still rated 91 overall which is tied with four other players for the highest rating in the game. In FIFA 22 he was 93 overall. Messi today is still better than Beckham ever was as Prime. Beckham won the UEFA best player in Europe trophy once and was runner up for ballon d'Or once. Messi has won a record 7 times. All while Ronaldo was also in his prime (he's won 5 which is the second most). As far as cultural cache, Messi has something like 6 of the top 10 most liked posts on instagram.
Comparing Messi to Beckham is like comparing Gretzky to Corey Perry.
Soccer in general will pass the NHL but it absolutely won’t be MLS. A team made up of MLS “all stars” lost 5-0 to the 2nd place EPL team a few weeks ago. It will never attract the best players in their prime because it operates completely differently to the largest European leagues.
Yeah NHL has terrible marketing and they need to invest in newer tech, like in this day and age you should be able to stream in 4K, not 720p.
There is a lot of room for improvement.
Soccer does have a huge audience worldwide and now with Messi in MLS, I do see it growing in North America
My thought is, I think anyone with eyes and a brain over - let’s say, 30 - has seen how massive amounts of money have changed the sport, not for the better in my opinion.
I could care less what’s going on in the NBA.
Yeah and I could, but not much. Which you know full well, because that is the known meaning of the phrase I used. “Couldn’t care less,” on the other hand, would be inaccurate.
Eeeeeh people don’t use the phrase “I could care less” to mean they do care. You could argue it’s colloquially correct because it’s understood but it’s understood to mean the opposite. People don’t say that when they’re trying to express that they DO care.
“I could care less[, but not much]” is pretty clear in its meaning.
(We do this with other phrases too despite the apparent meaning changing too, eg. “The proof that is in the pudding is in the eating” -> “the proof is in the pudding”)
Anyway while I maintain that the wording I used was understandable to a typical reader, I will definitely say at this point that I regret not using the alternative, which despite being technically incorrect would have avoided this argument.
Imagine being a hopeless grammar scold who picks fights about a phrase with [two valid variants](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/could-couldnt-care-less), when we all know there has been no real confusion about meaning (ie. there is no point to any of this _other than_ being a grammar scold), and not bothering to proofread your own comment to boot.
I’m not wrong, though.
Nobody misunderstood me, and as per the source I provided neither usage is incorrect.
In an academic setting I’d use “couldn’t care less” because being a persnickety dweeb about this stuff is appropriate there, but this is the comments of a pretty dumb post on Reddit, so casual use is hardly grounds for criticism.
And like I said earlier, “couldn’t care less” is inaccurate - I do watch highlights or read the odd article, etc
Anyway as funny as this all is for all of us, I’m going to move on to my other Friday night plans at this point. Have a wonderful weekend
> My thought is, I think anyone with eyes and a brain over - let’s say, 30 - has seen how massive amounts of money have changed the sport, not for the better in my opinion.
>
> I could care less what’s going on in the NBA.
Yeah, I wrote this elsewhere as well. Frankly, there is a lot more to my enjoyment of the sport than just money and growth at all costs.
I would hate to see the NHL making some of the growth decisions that sports such as the NBA have tried/are trying.
Frankly, I am not entirely sure that it is going to end well for them either, but time will tell on that one.
The NHL is in a great spot. It doesn't need to compete with or have a higher revenue than the NBA, nor should it try to.
I am tired of the constant dick measuring of athletes contracts. There is nothing new to say, NBA has smaller rosters and more revenue, the MLB earns more revenue to pay their players with, the NFL earns more revenue but also only pays its super stars their worth.
We fucking get it already. It's already annoying whenever Walsh tweets salary comparables, do have to do it too?
Sorry about my rant, this is just something that bugs me. I do hate the NHL is less popular than other leagues, but threads like this feel really common and go in circles constantly. What I would like to see is a mega thread where we throw ideas around silly ideas for what we think could increase hockey's popularity. Could be fun.
and connor mcdavid is (if I did the maths and currency conversion right, which I can't promise I did, especially since I worked this out like a year ago) earning every year the same amount as the yearly salary cap for an australian rules football team in the highest level league, which has over 20 players on it, while 12 players in the 18 team league made a 7 figure salary last year, a new record. australian rules football is the most popular sport in australia.
it's almost like the economy around various sports vary depending on lots of different circumstances????
I will be annoyed about it the day the NHL stars are annoyed about it.
NHL stars presence at the NHLPA is laughable, they don't fight for their rights like NBA stars do. In the end, you get what you negotiate for.
https://www.nhlpa.com/the-pa/executive-board
Look at this list, where are the Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, etc.
It's a lot easier to bully bottom 6 players and borderline NHLers than it is to bully the stars who bring views.
Shows how shitty the NHL’s marketing has been over the years. Someone earlier posted about Messier signing with Vancouver in like 97 for $6M per year. Over 25 years later and salaries aren’t significantly higher. Hockey is a great sport, but the NHL can’t market for shit. With that said, I’m not shedding any tears for $6M per.
Marketing can only get you so far if 80% of the population can’t afford to play your sport. I could go to the store right now and buy a ball, then head to a park and shoot hoops for $15, I don’t even know how much it would cost me to go get fully set up for hockey. No amount of marketing is bridging that gap. I love hockey but people need to realize there’s a ceiling on how popular it can be just due to the cost factors.
And in most cases you can share. You share a basketball, football, baseball (tenni-ball), a bat, whatever. Tons of kids who have nothing on them can still join a game. With hockey, every single player at least needs a stick. Good luck trying to get a neighborhood of kids all on the same page
Personally I also think that because 1 player can affect the game the way they can in basketball, it inherently means the game itself is limited in terms of difficulty making it more interesting for a lot of people as well. People are less interested seeing a hockey player do an impossible play because it's also almost impossible to replicate unless you are a that level.
In basketball most moves or shots can be replicated in lesser competition/practice or shots replicated with pure luck. If height is more important most of the time, it means that talent is less important.
People are just wrong in here.
NBA has the highest salaries out of the 4 major sports. Even higher than the MLB and NFL, both of which make more money.
The NHL actually has a very similar average salary compared to the NFL and MLB, with all clocking in at the 4-6 million range. NBA dwarfs all of these in the 8-10 million average salary range. It’s by nature of the sport, not really by how much money the league makes. The NHL could make more money than the NBA and still have a lower salary amount for individual players because of how the sport works.
Good for the players and owners for making all of this money I guess.
That said, I think that there is a huge problem in our society and culture and how we handle and treat our sports and athletes. I think a lot of it changed back in the 70s and 80s as cable became more and more popular and we began to switch from consuming largely over the air broadcast media to subscription-based, yet still full of advertisers.
It allowed the revenue growth to accelerate, which lead to bigger and bigger salaries. It also allowed for more eyeballs and out-of-market access which increased fan bases leading to even larger revenues and it sort of snowballed. Over the past decade it's only increased with the presence of high speed internet, streaming services and so on.
The sports of our parents and grandparents generations are no longer the same as the sports of our generation. The games have changed, along with the organizations, athletes and yes us fans too.
All of that said, personally there are *a lot* of very complicated factors at play with something like this. Yes, the NBA is more popular but it's revenue also dwarfs the NHL. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue) has the numbers for season ending '21 and the NBA brought in $318MM/team, whereas the NHL brought in $153MM/team.
The salary floors for both leagues are [$136MM/team for the NBA](https://www.nba.com/news/nba-sets-salary-cap-at-136-million-for-2023-24-season) and [$61MM for the NHL](https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nhl/news/nhl-salary-cap-explained-every-team-space/klh15iu5mcd7ml3kiunjdr3m). The NBA salary floor per team is *nearly* 90% of the NHL revenue/team. Given that alone, there isn't a world where raw number comparisons alone will ever make sense, so what really matters are percentages here.
If we align salary floors with the revenue per team from above then the salary floor for the NBA makes up ~43% of revenue/team, whereas the NHL salary floor makes up ~40% of revenue/team. Pretty darn close if you ask me.
So what actually matters here is clearly revenue/team. With regards to that, the NHL clearly lags behind the NBA for a number of factors, which frankly I think some are ok (branching out to.. suspect.. markets for growth) and some are not (difficulty accessing simple streaming options) but they all contribute.
[This](https://www.sbnation.com/2017/7/11/15953260/2017-nhl-free-agency-money-nba-stars-explainer-connor-mcdavid-james-harden) is an older article on why individual player salaries end up being so high, which encapsulates some of what I have said, along with some other concepts discussed elsewhere in the comments.
New game idea: Jaylen Brown vs the entire Arizona Coyotes NHL team, on the basketball court, the coyotes have to wear all their hockey equipment except sticks. Skates stay on! What do y’all think?
Nba is big in china whereas old Canadian men get whiny and start suggesting players would be justified to take runs at other players if they act happy when they score.
the nhl should worry about mls which is on its heels, the nba has long surpassed it.
the sport is facing serious challenges to its future in terms of cost and interest. basketball is expanding into africa, and europe has given big stars in the league (doncic, giannis, joker).
just look at how wemby was marketed before he came, compared to bedard.
nba stars are also pop culture stars too so the avg person will want to generally be aware of the sport.
In my opinion the NHL puts on a FAR superior product. Part of why it does this is the fact that you can't just purchase a championship team. The salary cap seems to shuffle superiority on a pretty regular basis and landing a supermegastar won't even guarantee you a playoff spot. Sure, I can hear an argument around just make the cap a lot higher to get athletes paid more and keep that ever changing top echelon of teams, But at a certain point smaller markets wont afford the top talent, And the playing field is no longer equal. So yeah, I don't want the NHL to go that route.
> can't just purchase a championship team
You can't do that in the NBA either. The team that won the NBA Championship this year drafted and developed their stars. When Golden State was the best team they also drafted and developed their stars.
There is zero evidence that a salary cap has any influence on competitive balance. You can read about that [here.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://libjournals.mtsu.edu/index.php/jfee/article/download/1474/1056/4068%23:~:text%3DIn%2520either%2520case%252C%2520we%2520find,it%2520generates%2520the%2520greatest%2520revenue.&ved=2ahUKEwj8wN7a7rKAAxWPHjQIHetNCAgQFnoECA0QBg&usg=AOvVaw3QQqZZ1Pvgbf5zXe9sQCgR) Revenue sharing is a much more effective means of increasing competitive balance. The salary caps entire purpose is to keep players salaries down the owners have done an excellent job convincing the fans it's in service of competitive balance.
imho all the cap (as implemented) does is allow cheap/small market owners to weaponize cap space and spend as little real money on contracts as possible. in combination with how the draft works and other policies the entire league is built to reward cheap teams putting out a shit product and put exciting teams on a ticking clock til they have to to burn it all down.
just look how many orgs have won a cup then had to basically gut the team immediately. the NBA swung way too far the other way with dynasties and super teams but I honestly think the cap has led to a much diminished NHL product
I completely agree. Everyone was so up in arms about Tampa being 17M or whatever it was over the cap during their cup run but nobody seems to care that Arizona is taking on practically every dead contract in the league just to reach the floor.
Imo the NBAs problem is that superstars have so much impact on the game. Like in the NHL playoffs a top end player is maybe playing 20-25 mins a night while come playoff time an NBA star is going to play 40+ mins of a 48 min game.
Kind of a long read on a Friday night so I suppose I'll just have to take your word for it. Surprised to hear this though as around the world (Soccer in particular) rich clubs have substantially more success than not so rich clubs. Either way. Let the money flow then I guess. 🍻
Soccer (in Europe particularly) is very different from NA pro sports. They don't have entry drafts and players aren't under control of the team that drafted them (like RFAs). The best young players typically come through the academies of top teams. Even in the instance a really good young player comes through the system of a lesser team they can pretty much demand to be sold whenever they want as there's much more player autonomy. There's also no exchange of talent when a player gets sold to a better team it's for a fee the selling team doesn't acquire draft picks or prospects and there's no guarantee that the fee will be spent on new talent. Even if they do invest in new talent the players have to agree to sign for them so they can't just poach highly touted youngsters from bigger clubs.
The issue with a salary cap is that it doesn't make a team like Arizona for instance any richer. Big name free agents are still always going to go to places like Toronto, New York or Florida regardless of a salary cap.
Sorry this was much longer than I intended it to be.
As it’s already been pointed out. It’s hard to compare because of the visibility & marketing of the league & stars. As well as the amount of annual revenue generated by the leagues. The NHL can’t compare to the big 3 leagues.
With that said, since the lockout, the cap and how little its increased over time. That’s 100% Bettman and the owners suppressing salary growth over time.
It’s easy to point at guys like McDavid, MacKinnon, Matthews, etc. these guys are gonna get paid. But fans look at the big numbers of these stars. 90% of guys fall into those top 6-9 spots. You judge successful growth based upon the middle class salary of a league, where most of the players fall talent wise. And the NHL in some instances has gone backwards in that respect.
Lastly, the NHL is probably the least resistant to modernization in terms of analytics. Analytics has been the driving force behind the decline in RB values in the NFL, the 3 point boom in the NBA, and push for the 3 true outcome (HR/BB/K) at bat in MLB. There’s still a lot of clubs run by older former players from the 70s, 80s, & 90s. Guys that value stuff like hits and blocked shots over puck possession, etc. and some of these guys give questionable contracts to guys like Ryan Reeves and when the player shits the bed on that deal. It sets the market back for some players in that ilk in the eyes of management and temporarily depresses salaries for lower-middle class players.
People don’t like to hear it, but the NHL is a mickey mouse run league. It will forever be this way unless they truly want to grow the game properly. The salary cap is stuck in 2005 for christ sake.
There’s two changes I would make to increase players salaries:
1. I would have 2-3 years of an uncapped league. I wanna see the McDavids, Makars, etc. making $20M+ a season. Then the cap could get re-adjusted from there (I would also allow for restructuring during this time period)
2. I would limit contract lengths to 5 years like the NBA does. Give players more of an opportunity to get multiple bags and make teams less weary of a longer term commitment.
It’s wild lmao like I’m not gonna shed tears for guys making tens of millions but I would like some of my favorite athletes to be compensated more fairly.
Like Sidney Crosby is worth ~$75 Million whereas LeBron James is worth $1 Billion. That’s not fair to the NHL players.
Yea...for the grind they put their bodies thru, their salaries are paltry compared to other sports here in North America. 12.6AAV being the highest yearly salary is RIDICULOUSLY low compared to what top athletes are paid in MLB, NBA, and the NFL.
Well look at Mbappe, some sports just don't dock players' pay. Most athletes are massively overpaid, personally I think hockey is a harder sport, yet players make much less. It is crazy, but that's just sport...
I mean, that’s because the NBA is substantially more profitable than the NHL. In the US, the NHL is losing its place as 3rd/4th to the MLS. The league constantly fumbling when it comes to promoting itself certainly doesn’t help.
Here's the test for me.
How much does it cost to go to a game?
Last time I took my family out to an NHL game, it cost about what you'd pay for a new couch.
They need to get their costs more aligned with their revenue stream, because that's way, way too expensive even for the best hockey in the world.
For a slightly different perspective, Brown will make more than Patrick Mahomes who is probably the most valuable player in the league, in his prime and on pace for a HOF/GOAT like career
I’m not sure what to say about this. Personally I think there is something wrong with many levels of the NHL… nhl should have better pay (not even gonna match them to MLB, NBA or NFL contracts. I just feel the NHL isn’t doing a good enough job to compete or even compare to those other leagues. We are a mile behind and personally that has more to do with upper management than the sport itself.
It’s because the league is mismanaged. MBA players are superstars, genuinely some of the most famous people in the world, but you don’t see NHL players marketed like that. McDavid is arguably the most dynamic player of all time; but he’s not really in any advertisements. Compare this to NBA and NFL players, where I see one a commercial break
NBA appeals to the lowest common denominator making it more popular and profitable. Anyone can go outside and dribble a basketball. Hockey is a bit more refined and complex, making it harder to market and be relatable to the everyday citizen.
The money is one thing, but the marketing is truly insanely bad. I haven’t watched an NBA game in many, many years, and I just started watching NFL a couple years ago for fantasy.
But the number of players I could name in those sports and where they played and even some of the accomplishments is A LOT.
I live 5 minutes from the Honda Center, and I would have to hunt down someone in my area that could name me more than 2-3 NHLers, and they will say Gretzky/Lemieux and Crosby/Ovechkin. Aging stars and players retired 20+ years ago.
After some very light googling (so don't take this as gospel) there are 16 NBA teams that are worth more then the most valuable NHL franchise. NBA is bigger is every possible way, it generates much more money, has a higher salary cap, etc. Add on that there are much less players on an NBA roster and an individual player can have a much greater impact on any game, and of course the players make a shit ton more. Hockey is a pretty niche sport comparatively, doesn't mean the league is in bad shape.
There’s only 12 players per team, there’s no salary cap, stars have a much greater impact on the game and their league generates billions more than the NHL per year. Not surprising at all. I don’t feel bad for anyone in the NHL making their paltry millions annually in comparison.
Hit the nail on the head. Also the CBA that they have is extremely top heavy so guys are getting these wild deals while most role players are making peanuts in comparison. NHL with all its faults does a good job of making competitive salaries for a majority of players and avoids having situations where 3 or 4 guys make up like 85% of the salary.
The Suns current salary is funny. Four guys making over $30M and the rest are all under $3M I believe
This is what it looks like: https://hoopshype.com/salaries/phoenix_suns/
How can Lee even survive on only 559k
I now stan Bol Bol
Something something maple leafs something something Edit: I made a boo-boo with my maths but I made a low hanging fruit leafs joke so do with that what you will
The games, and salaries, are different by their very nature. In the NBA, two or three guys are all that is needed to make a top 3 seed in a playoff. The rest can be replacement level or worse. It’s not like that in the NHL. Those guys get the big money.
It’s more nuanced than that. NBA teams are moving away from the super team model and will continue to do so with the new CBA and ultra severe penalties for teams that go way over the luxury tax apron.
Like, the two teams in the finals last year were not superteams, just two teams with solid depth and a guy leading with that dawg in him
Explain worse than replacement level? The replacements of the replacements?
Means as along as they can run and bounce the ball with some sense of coordination they can be to the left of Lebron throwing him passes
Lakers last year are actually a good example. Once a functional unit that knew what they were doing (love ya russ but you werent working with lebron) was put around anthony davis and lebron they turned a subpar team into a deep playoff finishing team.
> avoids having situations where 3 or 4 guys make up like 85% of the salary. *looks sternly at Toronto*
Unless you’re a maple leafs player. Then the 4 compete to take up as much cap space as possible to ensure they never win a damn thing
Role players in the NBA make 10-15M a year, not sure that's peanutes
The perspn youre responding to said "peanuts in comparison".
Maybe a role playing starter. There's bench guys making much less than that
The guys on the bench in the 10-15 spots still make 1.5-3M a year.
There's guys on the bench making 500k salaries too. The pay gap in the NBA is fucking hilarious
Two random examples from good NBA teams: https://www.spotrac.com/nba/cleveland-cavaliers/cap/ https://www.spotrac.com/nba/milwaukee-bucks/cap/ The lowest paid player on Cleveland makes $2M and the lowest paid player on Milwaukee makes $1.2M. Also bench guys in the NBA are a bit different, they will literally never play unless it's in the final 5 minutes of a blowout game. When teams go on playoff runs they pretty much only use the same 8 players for their entire run.
Idk about peanuts. Paul Reed is getting 15 million dollars a year. When old guys can’t find a good deal, they often take an MLE that comes in at like 5.5-7.5 million.
If the NHL had 12 man rosters, and McDavid played 90% of the game, he'd be making a similar cap hit % It just NBA makes more money.
Can you imagine a world where salary was entirely dependent on TOI? Goalies would make away like bandits! *oh wait*
NBA is also a lot bigger globally than the NHL. They make more off of their Chinese market than the NHL does world wide.
There is a cap. Just not a hard cap.
It’s a fake cap as far as I’m concerned
It's pretty expensive to be above the hard cap and gets more expensive for every consecutive year. They also can't sign UFAs over the soft cap. A couple years ago the Warriors extended a player on a $10Mish deal and in real dollars it was over $40m. Also in the season after the next one the cap rules are going to change and going over the soft cap is going to be seriously unmanageable. Including losing a 1st round pick if you're over it for 3 out of 5 years
There is a salary cap, as well as a cap on the maximum any one player can make. Brown had to hit the "super-max" criteria in order to get his contract.
Because of the small rosters, the NBA draft only has two rounds. By the time you get deep in the second round, less than half the picks will ever see an NBA floor. So it's a hugely star-driven and not team-driven sport.
The ones I do feel bad for are the NFL guys who aren’t stars.
And minor league baseball players. Some of them get literal poverty wages. MLB lobbied for players in the minor leagues to be exempt from minimum wage laws.
The MLBPA is even worse than the NHLPA which is saying a lot.
Iirc the minor league just created their own union. I think their salaries increased with that. The Astros started providing housing for players in their minor league affiliates a few years ago and I think every team besides 1 or 2 have followed suit. It’s not all fixed but I think it’s trending in the right direction.
Good, hopefully things are on the up! That's one thing hockey has had for a long time, the AHL and ECHL have a union.
Yeah it is surprising considering their salaries were even 20 something years ago
They were not. In 1999 the nba top 5 salaries were between 25 million and 33 million for that year. Jagr and Kariya topped the nhl at only 10 million
I think you’re looking at the inflation adjusted figures there. Top 5 in the NBA in 1999 made $13m - $18.5m https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/1998-1999/
> I think you’re looking at the inflation adjusted figures there. > > Top 5 in the NBA in 1999 made $13m - $18.5m > > https://hoopshype.com/salaries/players/1998-1999/ A year earlier Jordan was making $33MM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-paid_NBA_players_by_season Edit: here is a good side by side by year: * [nhl](http://www.puckreport.com/2013/01/nhl-highest-paid-players-by-year.html) * [nba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-paid_NBA_players_by_season)
I don't know how many times people have to criticize the NHL's marketing for them to change something. They are being called out by the TNT basketball crew, twitter, pro wrestlers, even Snoop Dogg.
NHL and NHLPA negotiated a CBA that enriches the lower tier players at the expense.of the elite talent. Players like Jagr were getting paid $11m per year more than 20 years ago while the league minimum was 175K and the average was $1.7M. But since the salary cap players like Crosby and Ovechkin have been relatively underpaid while 3rd and 4th line players are getting paid 1/4 as much as the super stars. League min salary is now 775K and league average player is around $3.5M while McDavid gets $12.5M. Credit the hockey team culture, or the threat of European leagues poaching 3rd and 4th line talent but never having a chance at stars because star players want to play against the best of the best to earn glory , or whatever, but the NHL pays out down the roster and not just it's elite players.
I think that makes some sense when he still only plays a 1/3 of the game. The NBA stars play what, 4/5ths of the game? And 1/20 players vs 1/12 or even fewer if you only look at game time.
Definitely agree it's a cultural thing. It's probably as much culture as it is CBA related. I think it's a Canadian thing that has made its way into the wider hockey culture. It's not only Canadian guys that have participated - it's been a thing in New Jersey with non-Canadians for instance. But it's just always been a thing where the main guy (Crosby, McDavid, Bergeron, MacKinnon, Stamkos) is expected to give back and share with his teammates, and in return the other stars all get in line behind him and no one tries to overtake him in salary. Well in Stamkos' case, he got overtaken, but Point/Kucherov/Vasy all took less because he did it first. There's this self-enforced salary equalization that happens so that the lesser guys on the roster get to stay.
Average NHL salary in 1993 was about $300k , now it’s about $3 million. More NHL teams too, and more AHL. I blame Bettman.
You blame him because salaries should be even higher, right?
What did league revenues do during that time? Did they go up by more than 10x?
I think it was sarcasm, and the poster meant Bettman actually is doing it right.
Nah. I was being sarcastic. It’s popular to hate him . One group that can’t possibly hate him are the players. Another is the owners.
Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon together make as much in one season as the salary cap for five MLS teams.
That’s a big misrepresentation, it’s not a real cap like the NHL. It’s $5.2 million per team but in most cases your 3 best (and usually highest paid) players don’t count against the cap. The team with the smallest payroll Montreal pays about 9 million in salary, and there are about a dozen teams in the 9-13 million range to reach “1 Mcdavid.” Also Toronto FCs payroll, who is one of the highest, is about the same as both of their contracts combined… not 5. Their two DPs are each making $6+ million. [Take a look here](https://www.spotrac.com/mls/cap/)
Ya, Messi alone makes 10x the MLS salary cap.
There is also Targeted Allocation Money, and General Allocation Money (TAM and GAM) which can be used to buy down the cap impact of a player. i.e. A player is making 15k a week, the team can buy that down so it only has 7.5k cap impact. Meaning that the actual salaries are going to be more than the cap even excluding DPs.
I didn’t know that at all! Thanks for sharing!
MLS roster rules are fucking ludicrous.
And still are easier to understand than LTIR.
or goaltender interference
[удалено]
MLS can have three players whose salary is not included in the salary cap, such as Messi's annual salary in Miami is 55 million US dollars, which is almost 5 times the annual salary of McDavid
I don’t understand why the NHL and NBA are constantly compared. Outside of both being pro sports leagues, they aren’t really comparable at all
Very similar schedule, so they're constantly fighting (well the NHL is) over viewers
The NBA should move to a summer League. Start after March Madness and end in like November. Let baseball actually have some competition instead.
Similar schedule, similar playoff structure
They are comparable in many ways: they play in often the same major cities and in similar sized arenas with similar sized crowds. They are both top tier and are considered one of the four major sports in the US (and Canada), and having a team elevates a city’s status. Given this, comparing popularity, revenue, and player pay is completely reasonable. There are certainly factors that are unique to each league that affect player pay, but that doesn’t disqualify discussion.
I understand if an NHL executive makes the comparison because the NBA is a direct competitor for viewers. When (hockey)fans start this self deprecating dick measuring contest, that's bonkers to me. Completely different structure to rosters, completely different landscape globally. The only way the NHL will ever be on par with the NBA Moneywiese is if the latter completely shits the bed. I don't give a crap about basketball but there is just no way hockey can ever be as popular worldwide.
It’s what people watch when there is no football
If the NHL’s Jaylen Brown became the highest paid player in the league everyone would go crazy about what a bad contact it was.
Well yeah, because jaylen probably doesn't know how to play hockey
You can count on one hand the number of genuine, marketable personalities in the NHL. The NBA, nearly every player is a marketable personality. It doesn't help that the NHLs best players are also the most boring human beings on the planet. Hopefully kids like Zegras and Hughes can turn that around.
Dude finally someone says it. I get brain rot watching any hockey interview or press conference. It's a cess pool of clichès and non answers. People complain about the NHLs marketing, and while all star games and high talent vs high talent would help A TON, nobody who doesn't already like hockey is gonna tune in because fucking Joe Schmoe #45 whose apparently the best hockey player in the country just answered "Why do you think you're the better team over X?" by saying "Well uh yeah, they're clearly some guys who wanna, you know, play hard and win. But uh basically we just have a good spirit back there and uh, we just wanna get out there and put some pucks in the net."
Up until recently, individualism was shunned. NO ONE wanted players to show even an ounce of personality. This was hurting the league from a marketing standpoint. I've said it plenty of times before, but the smartest move (for things off the ice) that the NHL has ever made, was the deal they signed with Turner. NBA on TNT is an absolute event. You get a healthy mix of Xs/Os, banter, and discussions about things unrelated to the sport. This is the blueprint, and if the NHL on TNT can emulate even 2% of what the NBA does, it's a major win for the league as far as visibility.
Mbappe was about to make as much as 10 teams combined. They market the NHL like shit. MLS will surpass it, if it hasn't already. I love hockey but they do a terrible job building the game.
Yes the NHL does a terrible job marketing, but that Mbappe offer was pure Saudi sport washing money and really not a fair threshold to compare North American sports to.
Marketing isn’t everything. Hockey is a very inaccessible sport for the masses and only a part of the culture in pretty small (population wise) parts of the world. It’s much easier getting people who have grown up playing a sport interested, over trying to get 30 year olds that have never seen ice.
> Hockey is a very inaccessible sport for the masses Inaccessible as in, expensive to get gear and somewhere to practice/play? Or inaccessible as in, tv blackouts resulting in large swaths of the population never being able to see a hockey game? I think both apply to your statement actually.
Primarily the first. Playing as a kid is way more reliant on who your parents are and where you live, over if you want to. Can’t say the same about soccer or basketball
The first has to be the biggest reason. Looking back now, especially that I have a kid. I have no idea how I played hockey. I was raised by my grandma living off her pension, but she loved hockey, And I played AAA, so add hotels and all the extra fees. I would love to out my kid in hockey but I just can't afford it. So he's playing lacrosse. I think if you aren't born into hockey, it's a very hard game to pick up and get into if you don't understand it
Even now Mbappé has a loyalty bonus that's about to kick in worth £60M. But then again, soccer is just soccer. There's money to be had everywhere. It's a globally recognized sport and easily accessible as basketball. Hockey not so much. Lot of people won't care if they don't have the ability to actually play said sport.
Just be glad Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs aren't buying NHL teams and that the CCP isn't making NHL hockey the official sport of denying that Taiwan is a country. Money ruins everything. Why would real sports fans WANT better marketing?
With Messi the mls will certainly surpass the NHL in the US
That’s what they thought with Beckham going to LA. Turns out Americans do not like soccer. (On average.)
Soccers been 5 years away from taking over American sports for 30 years now.
Pele came to whatever the American soccer league was in the 70s. It’s been almost 50 years of Soccer taking over any day now.
As a professional sport. I believe it is the single most popular youth sport by participation in the US.
Oh no doubt. It’s fun, cheap, and relatively safe.
And look how it changed since then, went from a struggling league to one with 500 million dollar expansion fees, teams that win CCL, and Messi coming off a World Cup; MLS is available worldwide through Apple and is the world’s most popular sport. The US is hosting Copa America and the World Cup in the best four years. By 2030 MLS and the NHL will be comparably sized leagues
!remindme 7 years
MLS has come a long way since Beckham
Shhhh hockey fans love shitting on soccer. How dare you interrupt.
Messi at 36 is still one of the best players in the world and the best player in the MLS. Plus Messi has a bigger global reach than Beckham and MLS has better marketability than the NHL
And they all said that when Beckham came to the US... and MLS is still a small blip on the radar. Soccer has been 5-10 years away from exploding in North America for as long as I've been a live. Nothing against soccer but MLS entering the company of the Big 4 sport leagues here... not happening.
Aged Messi and prime Messi are slightly different
Did you follow Ligue 1 or the World Cup last year?Sure he’s not prime Messi just embarrassing entire 11s single-handedly, but he’s still easily one of the best players on earth and his name (which is trademarked hilariously) and image are probably worth more than the entirety of NHL or MLS’s brands. No hate on the NHL, it’s my favourite major sports league, but top footballers are in a whole other world to anything hockey related. For some perspective, he’s arguably still in his prime (he’s still dominant regardless of any regression), and he’s in the conversation with only about 2 others for best player in history, in the most popular sport in history.
If by slightly different you actually mean slightly different then yes. The other commenter explained the Messi is still very very good. For what it's worth in FIFA he is still rated 91 overall which is tied with four other players for the highest rating in the game. In FIFA 22 he was 93 overall. Messi today is still better than Beckham ever was as Prime. Beckham won the UEFA best player in Europe trophy once and was runner up for ballon d'Or once. Messi has won a record 7 times. All while Ronaldo was also in his prime (he's won 5 which is the second most). As far as cultural cache, Messi has something like 6 of the top 10 most liked posts on instagram. Comparing Messi to Beckham is like comparing Gretzky to Corey Perry.
What would you do differently? Just curious. IMO the barrier to entry in the sport is just too astronomical for all but the upper middle class+
MLS will pass the nhl by 2030 with the bump of the best player of all time joining the league and hosting the men’s World Cup in 2026.
Soccer in general will pass the NHL but it absolutely won’t be MLS. A team made up of MLS “all stars” lost 5-0 to the 2nd place EPL team a few weeks ago. It will never attract the best players in their prime because it operates completely differently to the largest European leagues.
Soccer already has passed hockey in popularity.
they have Messi. It's over. NHL is 5th in NA and will die
Saying that it's going to die is also very dumb. It's very lucrative, even if it isn't as lucrative as the NBA.
Yeah NHL has terrible marketing and they need to invest in newer tech, like in this day and age you should be able to stream in 4K, not 720p. There is a lot of room for improvement. Soccer does have a huge audience worldwide and now with Messi in MLS, I do see it growing in North America
Thoughts are that the income inequality in our society is just crazy.
My thought is, I think anyone with eyes and a brain over - let’s say, 30 - has seen how massive amounts of money have changed the sport, not for the better in my opinion. I could care less what’s going on in the NBA.
Couldn't care less. Could care less implies that you do in fact care.
Yeah and I could, but not much. Which you know full well, because that is the known meaning of the phrase I used. “Couldn’t care less,” on the other hand, would be inaccurate.
Eeeeeh people don’t use the phrase “I could care less” to mean they do care. You could argue it’s colloquially correct because it’s understood but it’s understood to mean the opposite. People don’t say that when they’re trying to express that they DO care.
“I could care less[, but not much]” is pretty clear in its meaning. (We do this with other phrases too despite the apparent meaning changing too, eg. “The proof that is in the pudding is in the eating” -> “the proof is in the pudding”) Anyway while I maintain that the wording I used was understandable to a typical reader, I will definitely say at this point that I regret not using the alternative, which despite being technically incorrect would have avoided this argument.
One is a saying, the other is not. Nobody says 'What's good for the goose *isn't* good for the gander', or 'to the victor go the bad stuff'.
I agree that it’s fine because people understand either way.
Lol imagine being the confidently wrong
Imagine being a hopeless grammar scold who picks fights about a phrase with [two valid variants](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/could-couldnt-care-less), when we all know there has been no real confusion about meaning (ie. there is no point to any of this _other than_ being a grammar scold), and not bothering to proofread your own comment to boot.
I’m not being a “grammar scold” so much as I’m laughing at your inability to admit you were wrong, but sure.
I’m not wrong, though. Nobody misunderstood me, and as per the source I provided neither usage is incorrect. In an academic setting I’d use “couldn’t care less” because being a persnickety dweeb about this stuff is appropriate there, but this is the comments of a pretty dumb post on Reddit, so casual use is hardly grounds for criticism. And like I said earlier, “couldn’t care less” is inaccurate - I do watch highlights or read the odd article, etc Anyway as funny as this all is for all of us, I’m going to move on to my other Friday night plans at this point. Have a wonderful weekend
Oh yeah you wouldn’t want to come off as a persnickety dweeb
> My thought is, I think anyone with eyes and a brain over - let’s say, 30 - has seen how massive amounts of money have changed the sport, not for the better in my opinion. > > I could care less what’s going on in the NBA. Yeah, I wrote this elsewhere as well. Frankly, there is a lot more to my enjoyment of the sport than just money and growth at all costs. I would hate to see the NHL making some of the growth decisions that sports such as the NBA have tried/are trying. Frankly, I am not entirely sure that it is going to end well for them either, but time will tell on that one. The NHL is in a great spot. It doesn't need to compete with or have a higher revenue than the NBA, nor should it try to.
How does how much someone make effect your interest in a sport?
Could not agree more.
Basketball puts me to sleep. Thump thump swish thump thump swish yawnfest.
I am tired of the constant dick measuring of athletes contracts. There is nothing new to say, NBA has smaller rosters and more revenue, the MLB earns more revenue to pay their players with, the NFL earns more revenue but also only pays its super stars their worth. We fucking get it already. It's already annoying whenever Walsh tweets salary comparables, do have to do it too? Sorry about my rant, this is just something that bugs me. I do hate the NHL is less popular than other leagues, but threads like this feel really common and go in circles constantly. What I would like to see is a mega thread where we throw ideas around silly ideas for what we think could increase hockey's popularity. Could be fun.
and connor mcdavid is (if I did the maths and currency conversion right, which I can't promise I did, especially since I worked this out like a year ago) earning every year the same amount as the yearly salary cap for an australian rules football team in the highest level league, which has over 20 players on it, while 12 players in the 18 team league made a 7 figure salary last year, a new record. australian rules football is the most popular sport in australia. it's almost like the economy around various sports vary depending on lots of different circumstances????
Thoughts? NBA is a LOT bigger than the NHL.
No thoughts
Celtics should have never given him that deal
I will be annoyed about it the day the NHL stars are annoyed about it. NHL stars presence at the NHLPA is laughable, they don't fight for their rights like NBA stars do. In the end, you get what you negotiate for. https://www.nhlpa.com/the-pa/executive-board Look at this list, where are the Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, etc. It's a lot easier to bully bottom 6 players and borderline NHLers than it is to bully the stars who bring views.
Shows how shitty the NHL’s marketing has been over the years. Someone earlier posted about Messier signing with Vancouver in like 97 for $6M per year. Over 25 years later and salaries aren’t significantly higher. Hockey is a great sport, but the NHL can’t market for shit. With that said, I’m not shedding any tears for $6M per.
Marketing can only get you so far if 80% of the population can’t afford to play your sport. I could go to the store right now and buy a ball, then head to a park and shoot hoops for $15, I don’t even know how much it would cost me to go get fully set up for hockey. No amount of marketing is bridging that gap. I love hockey but people need to realize there’s a ceiling on how popular it can be just due to the cost factors.
And in most cases you can share. You share a basketball, football, baseball (tenni-ball), a bat, whatever. Tons of kids who have nothing on them can still join a game. With hockey, every single player at least needs a stick. Good luck trying to get a neighborhood of kids all on the same page
Personally I also think that because 1 player can affect the game the way they can in basketball, it inherently means the game itself is limited in terms of difficulty making it more interesting for a lot of people as well. People are less interested seeing a hockey player do an impossible play because it's also almost impossible to replicate unless you are a that level. In basketball most moves or shots can be replicated in lesser competition/practice or shots replicated with pure luck. If height is more important most of the time, it means that talent is less important.
It was a statement offer and people talk about Matthews potentially making $14m, after a flat cap for several years caused by a global pandemic.
Shitty? NHL marketing? My brand new NHL NFTs that were just released beg to differ.
True, Messier was really underpaid in Vancouver.
What do you mean by bad marketing?
People are just wrong in here. NBA has the highest salaries out of the 4 major sports. Even higher than the MLB and NFL, both of which make more money. The NHL actually has a very similar average salary compared to the NFL and MLB, with all clocking in at the 4-6 million range. NBA dwarfs all of these in the 8-10 million average salary range. It’s by nature of the sport, not really by how much money the league makes. The NHL could make more money than the NBA and still have a lower salary amount for individual players because of how the sport works.
And Messi has made as much as McDavids entire career in one year. It’s apples to oranges and a stupid argument.
Good for Jaylen
The bettman effect. Fucking car racing and soccer have overtaken the nhl under his awful tenure
Good for the players and owners for making all of this money I guess. That said, I think that there is a huge problem in our society and culture and how we handle and treat our sports and athletes. I think a lot of it changed back in the 70s and 80s as cable became more and more popular and we began to switch from consuming largely over the air broadcast media to subscription-based, yet still full of advertisers. It allowed the revenue growth to accelerate, which lead to bigger and bigger salaries. It also allowed for more eyeballs and out-of-market access which increased fan bases leading to even larger revenues and it sort of snowballed. Over the past decade it's only increased with the presence of high speed internet, streaming services and so on. The sports of our parents and grandparents generations are no longer the same as the sports of our generation. The games have changed, along with the organizations, athletes and yes us fans too. All of that said, personally there are *a lot* of very complicated factors at play with something like this. Yes, the NBA is more popular but it's revenue also dwarfs the NHL. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue) has the numbers for season ending '21 and the NBA brought in $318MM/team, whereas the NHL brought in $153MM/team. The salary floors for both leagues are [$136MM/team for the NBA](https://www.nba.com/news/nba-sets-salary-cap-at-136-million-for-2023-24-season) and [$61MM for the NHL](https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nhl/news/nhl-salary-cap-explained-every-team-space/klh15iu5mcd7ml3kiunjdr3m). The NBA salary floor per team is *nearly* 90% of the NHL revenue/team. Given that alone, there isn't a world where raw number comparisons alone will ever make sense, so what really matters are percentages here. If we align salary floors with the revenue per team from above then the salary floor for the NBA makes up ~43% of revenue/team, whereas the NHL salary floor makes up ~40% of revenue/team. Pretty darn close if you ask me. So what actually matters here is clearly revenue/team. With regards to that, the NHL clearly lags behind the NBA for a number of factors, which frankly I think some are ok (branching out to.. suspect.. markets for growth) and some are not (difficulty accessing simple streaming options) but they all contribute. [This](https://www.sbnation.com/2017/7/11/15953260/2017-nhl-free-agency-money-nba-stars-explainer-connor-mcdavid-james-harden) is an older article on why individual player salaries end up being so high, which encapsulates some of what I have said, along with some other concepts discussed elsewhere in the comments.
New game idea: Jaylen Brown vs the entire Arizona Coyotes NHL team, on the basketball court, the coyotes have to wear all their hockey equipment except sticks. Skates stay on! What do y’all think?
The economics are just different, it's not a surprise or new really.
The nhl is terrible at marketing it stars in the states.
Mbappé's contract was like ten times the salary cap of the league. Bigger leagues get to spend more money, IDK what to tell you....
Nba is big in china whereas old Canadian men get whiny and start suggesting players would be justified to take runs at other players if they act happy when they score.
the nhl should worry about mls which is on its heels, the nba has long surpassed it. the sport is facing serious challenges to its future in terms of cost and interest. basketball is expanding into africa, and europe has given big stars in the league (doncic, giannis, joker). just look at how wemby was marketed before he came, compared to bedard. nba stars are also pop culture stars too so the avg person will want to generally be aware of the sport.
In my opinion the NHL puts on a FAR superior product. Part of why it does this is the fact that you can't just purchase a championship team. The salary cap seems to shuffle superiority on a pretty regular basis and landing a supermegastar won't even guarantee you a playoff spot. Sure, I can hear an argument around just make the cap a lot higher to get athletes paid more and keep that ever changing top echelon of teams, But at a certain point smaller markets wont afford the top talent, And the playing field is no longer equal. So yeah, I don't want the NHL to go that route.
> can't just purchase a championship team You can't do that in the NBA either. The team that won the NBA Championship this year drafted and developed their stars. When Golden State was the best team they also drafted and developed their stars.
There is zero evidence that a salary cap has any influence on competitive balance. You can read about that [here.](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://libjournals.mtsu.edu/index.php/jfee/article/download/1474/1056/4068%23:~:text%3DIn%2520either%2520case%252C%2520we%2520find,it%2520generates%2520the%2520greatest%2520revenue.&ved=2ahUKEwj8wN7a7rKAAxWPHjQIHetNCAgQFnoECA0QBg&usg=AOvVaw3QQqZZ1Pvgbf5zXe9sQCgR) Revenue sharing is a much more effective means of increasing competitive balance. The salary caps entire purpose is to keep players salaries down the owners have done an excellent job convincing the fans it's in service of competitive balance.
imho all the cap (as implemented) does is allow cheap/small market owners to weaponize cap space and spend as little real money on contracts as possible. in combination with how the draft works and other policies the entire league is built to reward cheap teams putting out a shit product and put exciting teams on a ticking clock til they have to to burn it all down. just look how many orgs have won a cup then had to basically gut the team immediately. the NBA swung way too far the other way with dynasties and super teams but I honestly think the cap has led to a much diminished NHL product
I completely agree. Everyone was so up in arms about Tampa being 17M or whatever it was over the cap during their cup run but nobody seems to care that Arizona is taking on practically every dead contract in the league just to reach the floor. Imo the NBAs problem is that superstars have so much impact on the game. Like in the NHL playoffs a top end player is maybe playing 20-25 mins a night while come playoff time an NBA star is going to play 40+ mins of a 48 min game.
Kind of a long read on a Friday night so I suppose I'll just have to take your word for it. Surprised to hear this though as around the world (Soccer in particular) rich clubs have substantially more success than not so rich clubs. Either way. Let the money flow then I guess. 🍻
Soccer (in Europe particularly) is very different from NA pro sports. They don't have entry drafts and players aren't under control of the team that drafted them (like RFAs). The best young players typically come through the academies of top teams. Even in the instance a really good young player comes through the system of a lesser team they can pretty much demand to be sold whenever they want as there's much more player autonomy. There's also no exchange of talent when a player gets sold to a better team it's for a fee the selling team doesn't acquire draft picks or prospects and there's no guarantee that the fee will be spent on new talent. Even if they do invest in new talent the players have to agree to sign for them so they can't just poach highly touted youngsters from bigger clubs. The issue with a salary cap is that it doesn't make a team like Arizona for instance any richer. Big name free agents are still always going to go to places like Toronto, New York or Florida regardless of a salary cap. Sorry this was much longer than I intended it to be.
Good for him. Hope he makes as much money as possible. Same with the NHL guys. Get that cash.
I honestly don't know who Jaylen Brown is. I just looked him up and he plays for the Celtics.
As it’s already been pointed out. It’s hard to compare because of the visibility & marketing of the league & stars. As well as the amount of annual revenue generated by the leagues. The NHL can’t compare to the big 3 leagues. With that said, since the lockout, the cap and how little its increased over time. That’s 100% Bettman and the owners suppressing salary growth over time. It’s easy to point at guys like McDavid, MacKinnon, Matthews, etc. these guys are gonna get paid. But fans look at the big numbers of these stars. 90% of guys fall into those top 6-9 spots. You judge successful growth based upon the middle class salary of a league, where most of the players fall talent wise. And the NHL in some instances has gone backwards in that respect. Lastly, the NHL is probably the least resistant to modernization in terms of analytics. Analytics has been the driving force behind the decline in RB values in the NFL, the 3 point boom in the NBA, and push for the 3 true outcome (HR/BB/K) at bat in MLB. There’s still a lot of clubs run by older former players from the 70s, 80s, & 90s. Guys that value stuff like hits and blocked shots over puck possession, etc. and some of these guys give questionable contracts to guys like Ryan Reeves and when the player shits the bed on that deal. It sets the market back for some players in that ilk in the eyes of management and temporarily depresses salaries for lower-middle class players.
Hasn't the middle class gone up relative to the top salaries since the cap?
And people say hockey players are greedy.
And mbappe was offered 700m euros for 1 season
Jaylen Brown has more name recognition than some NHL franchises. Not that surprising. NHL is far far away from being as popular as the NBA.
People don’t like to hear it, but the NHL is a mickey mouse run league. It will forever be this way unless they truly want to grow the game properly. The salary cap is stuck in 2005 for christ sake.
There’s two changes I would make to increase players salaries: 1. I would have 2-3 years of an uncapped league. I wanna see the McDavids, Makars, etc. making $20M+ a season. Then the cap could get re-adjusted from there (I would also allow for restructuring during this time period) 2. I would limit contract lengths to 5 years like the NBA does. Give players more of an opportunity to get multiple bags and make teams less weary of a longer term commitment.
Still wild to me that one of the greatest athletes to EVER play in the NHL (McDavid) isn't even making Max Strus money lol.
It’s wild lmao like I’m not gonna shed tears for guys making tens of millions but I would like some of my favorite athletes to be compensated more fairly. Like Sidney Crosby is worth ~$75 Million whereas LeBron James is worth $1 Billion. That’s not fair to the NHL players.
Yea...for the grind they put their bodies thru, their salaries are paltry compared to other sports here in North America. 12.6AAV being the highest yearly salary is RIDICULOUSLY low compared to what top athletes are paid in MLB, NBA, and the NFL.
Hockey fans are overly whiny and insecure. Thoughts?
My thoughts are that I dont come to r/hockey to talk about basketball. May the tallest team win......barring a poorly timed flop.
And Ryan Reaves will be making 2x what an entire NWHL team's roster gets paid. What's your point?
Well look at Mbappe, some sports just don't dock players' pay. Most athletes are massively overpaid, personally I think hockey is a harder sport, yet players make much less. It is crazy, but that's just sport...
First thought: who the fuck is Jaylen Brown? Second thought: K.
need Lebron and Messi to quit their sports and come to the nhl for a few years to bump up the cap.
Good for him.
Half as many players on an NBA team. And the league pulls in more than double the revenue.
“Not a real league.”
I mean, that’s because the NBA is substantially more profitable than the NHL. In the US, the NHL is losing its place as 3rd/4th to the MLS. The league constantly fumbling when it comes to promoting itself certainly doesn’t help.
Be interesting to see what percentage of league revenue it is vs NHL players and their league.
Whoop dee doooo
Here's the test for me. How much does it cost to go to a game? Last time I took my family out to an NHL game, it cost about what you'd pay for a new couch. They need to get their costs more aligned with their revenue stream, because that's way, way too expensive even for the best hockey in the world.
For a slightly different perspective, Brown will make more than Patrick Mahomes who is probably the most valuable player in the league, in his prime and on pace for a HOF/GOAT like career
you say "salary cap floor" i say arizona coyotes
I’m not sure what to say about this. Personally I think there is something wrong with many levels of the NHL… nhl should have better pay (not even gonna match them to MLB, NBA or NFL contracts. I just feel the NHL isn’t doing a good enough job to compete or even compare to those other leagues. We are a mile behind and personally that has more to do with upper management than the sport itself.
>Thoughts? Good for him.
And he’s not even elite!
It’s because the league is mismanaged. MBA players are superstars, genuinely some of the most famous people in the world, but you don’t see NHL players marketed like that. McDavid is arguably the most dynamic player of all time; but he’s not really in any advertisements. Compare this to NBA and NFL players, where I see one a commercial break
I think it means that a lot more people like basketball.
NBA appeals to the lowest common denominator making it more popular and profitable. Anyone can go outside and dribble a basketball. Hockey is a bit more refined and complex, making it harder to market and be relatable to the everyday citizen.
Patrick Mahomes makes more per season than the roster of the entire CFL.
If you want to go the opposite way look at CFL player contracts Zach Collaros is the highest paid player making a whoping 600k
The money is one thing, but the marketing is truly insanely bad. I haven’t watched an NBA game in many, many years, and I just started watching NFL a couple years ago for fantasy. But the number of players I could name in those sports and where they played and even some of the accomplishments is A LOT. I live 5 minutes from the Honda Center, and I would have to hunt down someone in my area that could name me more than 2-3 NHLers, and they will say Gretzky/Lemieux and Crosby/Ovechkin. Aging stars and players retired 20+ years ago.
But isnt Bettman is a smart business man?
The Coyotes are looking to sign him when he retires and run a full roster of league minimum players.
After some very light googling (so don't take this as gospel) there are 16 NBA teams that are worth more then the most valuable NHL franchise. NBA is bigger is every possible way, it generates much more money, has a higher salary cap, etc. Add on that there are much less players on an NBA roster and an individual player can have a much greater impact on any game, and of course the players make a shit ton more. Hockey is a pretty niche sport comparatively, doesn't mean the league is in bad shape.
they make way more money and market the sport well. Too bad.
Comparisons to the NBA are useless