Dynasties are Dead Because of Salary Cap

It would be one thing, defensible even, if the NHL’s hard-cap system simply acted as a mechanism to prevent power-revenue teams from buying all the best free agents on the market and instead promoted the organic construction of teams through the entry draft and player development system.

But no. Instead, this unyielding system — whose only core principle is enforcement of percentage-of-the-gross — acts as a roadblock to internal development and punishes teams that draft too well, and thus own a stable of high-end youngsters.