Struck by the fact that the highest-paid players in the league (McDavid, Matthews, Panarin, Karlsson, Tavares) never seem to win the Cup, I did some research and decided to make this infographic to illustrate statistically what most fans seem to understand intuitively (but most GM’s and players can’t seem to wrap their heads around):
**(TL;DR) Paying one player 14+% of your salary cap space is a damn-near-guarantee you’ll have to wait to win the Stanley Cup… and you may just miss your window, entirely.**
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[Unlike in football, this red zone is bad.](https://preview.redd.it/7ha5sj78vmcb1.jpg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8820aaccff94b7db74bde78b9d77740957b07b2)
Some of the points I came across:
* Kane and Toews (as well as Kopitar and Doughty) won all their Cups before their massive contracts kicked in and crippled their teams’ ability to build competitive depth around them.
* Ovechkin had to wait until his contract was less onerous to win (and Crosby had to wait to win again after 2009… more on that below).
* Stamkos, Kucherov, Vasilevskiy, and Point all took relative discounts to win sooner.
* Paying ANY goalie 12+% of your cap space is a serious gamble. Price and Bobrovsky *almost* won it…
* Matthews, Tavares, and Marner will all fall into the ‘orange’ zone (13-13.9%) for 2023-24, for a combined total of 40.2% for 3 players. This isn’t the NBA- no championship teams’ salaries are structured like that.
I know… all of these seem so obvious, but here are the facts (in numbers) and teams / players keep making the same mistakes. They say they want to win. I’m sure they do want to win. But their pride forces them to take the most money possible, and then they *can’t* win (at least not for years, until the cap goes up enough).
Some notes / anomalies:
* COVID19 screwed the whole world over, and contending NHL teams were no exception. The massive contracts handed out (like candy) from 2018 to 2019 were written with no way of knowing how crippling they would be once the salary cap stopped increasing during the pandemic.
* Bad contracts are just bad contracts (\*cough\* Karlsson \*cough\* Doughty \*cough\*), and those are a whole other (although related) reason for a team’s lack of success.
* The early days of the salary cap era show numerous exceptions to the later rule (Weight, Lidstrom, Niedermayer, and Pronger all won cups with salaries above 14% of the cap). My theory is that there is more parity in the average player salary, now, so there is less room for one or two excessive contracts. (Crosby’s then-mega-contract of $8.7 million, or 15.3%, in 2008-09 was only offset by Malkin and Letang still being on ELC’s- the team struggled mightily to win in the playoffs once Malkin got paid, too.)
(Pierre LeBrun wrote an article on this topic ([in the Athletic, here](https://theathletic.com/2527295/2021/04/19/lebrun-can-an-nhl-team-with-high-priced-stars-win-in-the-playoffs/)) a couple years ago, but I’ve gone in and researched this based on percentages of the total cap rather than dollar amounts, so these percentages can be applied to the entirety of the cap era without needing to do any extra math or conversion.)
by Clipped_Wings0
9 Comments
This is actually some really good info on why players should be willing to have less salary. Getting paid 1M dollars every year if you play on the fourth line still pretty much makes you rich. If I were a star player, I wouldn’t mind getting paid around 5-7 million as opposed to 10-12 million if it meant my team could win. I’d still have a load of money.
A good team is a balanced team. All offense with no defense can be picked apart and vise versa. This is a great post OP, thanks for taking the time to do it
Well said. GMs need to show this post to players and ask them if they want the money or if they want the Cup.
Get that bag. With 32 teams, a hard cap and 23-man rosters, even the top players have very little control in winning a Stanley Cup. Teammates can get injured. Goalies can go on a heater. You could get drafted to the Wild. Your team could hire Brian Burke as your GM. James Dolan remembers he owns a hockey team and takes a more hands-on approach. So on, so on.
It should not be a drag on their legacy if, say, McDavid or Matthews don’t win a Cup, because one player has such minimal impact. So make that money.
The early 2010s Penguins were also cursed with injury. That team (led by prime Sid) could have made some good playoff runs and maybe been the exception in Crosby didn’t miss 100+ games over 3 years.
I can understand the McDavid contract. He’d probs bounce from Edmonton if he didn’t get paid well to play there. Luckily for Oilers fans that Draisaitl, who’s an absolute stud, has a relatively lower cap hit.
What’s needed from Edmonton’s supportive role players is they need to understand they’re lucky to play with McJesus / Drai, and should be willing to sign at a relative discount.
Also, I understand MacKinnon’s stance. He was playing at a significant discount for many a year.
But otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree. Balance always wins.
Lmao the highest paid player this year is a winner
Notice there’s no Mackinnon who was a steal for many years putting up god-like ppg stats.
Then look at Makar…Darnell nurse (no disrespect) makes more than makar.
Who here believes Mackinnon is regretting his bargain contract and would trade it back for his ring? He’s fkn elated…and still quite comfortable financially imo.