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Full Speed Ahead to February 29: Buyers, Sellers & the Midnight Oil

February 27th, 2016 by Michael Dyet

Hmmm, what is an NHL GM to do when the numbers just do not add up to the perfect team?

We are closing in on the annual NHL trade deadline which is giving sportscasters plenty to debate and analyze. Our stumbling Maple Leafs are front and center in that dialogue with their burn it the ground and rebuild from the smoldering ashes philosophy. The Leafs are banking draft picks almost as fast as Donald Trump is acquiring enemies.

Virtually every opinion espoused by the sports analysts makes at least one reference to the salary cap. The salary cap, for those of you who are not hockey fans, is a negotiated agreement between the NHL Players Association and the team owners. It stipulates that the total 2015/2106 payroll for a team cannot exceed $71.4 million.

The analysts, armed to the teeth with statistics, like to throw around terms like tight to the cap as they speculate who the buyers and the sellers are in the race to the deadline and the constraints the buyers face in staying within the cap.

You would think that the princely sum of $71.4 million would be plenty to work with for one team. But the equation changes quickly when you take into account that the elite players in the league devour the lion’s share of the pot.

For example, here is what the top five highest paid players in the league this season are earning (not including off-ice endorsement contracts) and what percentage that represents of the maximum team payroll. 

  • Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins: $16.5 million (23%)
  • Jonathan Toews, Chicago Black Hawks: $16 million (22.5%)
  • Patrick Kane, Chicago Black Hawks: $14.7 million (20.5%)
  • Shea Weber, Nashville Predators: $14.1 million (20%)
  • Alexander Ovechkin, Washington Capitals: $13 million (18%)

Let’s put those figures into perspective. If you or I are fortunate enough to average $50,000 per year over a 45 year working career, we will have earned a cumulative total of $2.25 million by the time we retire. That figures sounds impressive until you consider it is only 13.5% of what Sidney Crosby will earn this year alone.

NHL GMs are staying up to the wee hours these days creatively number crunching to maximize who they can acquire within the salary cap limitation. But I am not inclined to be too sympathetic to their plight. After all, the old burning the midnight oil metaphor takes on a whole new meaning when you have $71.4 million worth of oil to fuel your lamp.

Special offer to Maple Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello. I will sign on with the Maple Leafs for the bargain basement price of $500,000 if it will help them return to respectability. I may be 25 years too old with a wonky back. But half a million buys a lot of acupuncture treatments.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog.

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