Player agent blasts the NHL over the Salary Cap

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Sam Hutch
January 8, 2024 (6:24 PM)

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NHL agent Allan Walsh has once again aired his thoughts on the NHL and it's salary cap after William Nylander's new deal

With the Toronto Maple Leafs and William Nylander agreeing on a monster 8-year-contract-extension today, it's made a lot of fans and media being up the fact that hockey plays are greedy for taking money based on how much of the cap they take up on their team instead of being happy that one of their stars has signed long term.

Famed player agent Allan Walsh had taken to X to come down hard on the National Hockey League for choosing a hard cap business model; take a look

Back in 2004, Bob Goodenow said a hard salary cap would dominate fan and media discussions, become detrimental to growing the game we love. He was right. Nowadays, the fan bases around the NHL are all wringing their hands over a players AAV. The debate becomes «he's a really good player, but is he worth $6M AAV? We only have so much cap space to go around.» This could have been avoided with a luxury tax. Instead, the system makes players the villains for taking up X% of a teams cap space. Horrible business model.

I've said this time and time again, two things are ruining the state of hockey the way that it is, The Department of Player Safety and the hard Salary Cap.

The NHL is the only league out of the 4 major sports in North America that still operates under a hard cap. It's old and archaic. Besides, what's the point of having an immovable cap if in the playoffs, it's scrapped all together.

The fact is, having a hard salary cap never made any sense then and it makes even less sense now.

It's not often I agree with Walsh, but this time, he's spot on.

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Do you think the hard salary cap needs to go?
Yes	200	40.2 %
No	128	25.7 %
The salary cap should go	52	10.4 %
The salary cap should stay	118	23.7 %
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