Also, kudos to TPL for featuring blog-less fans' writing. It's awesome reading everybody's perspectives.

The other thing to consider is that by tanking, high draft picks can be earned to point the team in the right direction. The best part about this from the team's perspective is twofold: they can show their fans that they are trying to "build from within" and create what they hope will be long-term success, and while these players are young and still under their entry-level contracts, they are inexpensive. No real hard decisions have to be made until their rookie contracts are up, and owners can assess how much of an impact their "direction" has had on their revenues. If it's little, then you sell off your soon-to-be high priced players and start over. The thinking is that maybe one year, you can hit upon that magical formula for either a Cup or a very deep run, creating a buzz around the team that increases revenues while keeping overhead down. My guess is that type of scenario would be the exception rather than the rule.

The Carolina situation, as well as Nashville (which is kind of funny to me, considering I wrote about this before they traded their captain and the rights to Dan Hamhuis) is exactly the sly reason why I'm kind of in awe at the way the CBA was set up. Chicago had the means to take the shackles off as the 3rd-largest city in the U.S. It's a lot less of a gamble, considering they're selling to a population base almost 5 times larger than Nashville's. Since the lockout, the Preds have earned 55 more points in the standings than the Hawks but have never posted an operating profit, despite having relatively low salary hits. It's much less risky for the Hawks to start spending (after tanking for the draft picks which would become their core) than it would be for the Preds. They would have to commit to losing money in the eight figures for a couple of years to build a team successful enough to maybe make money after winning a cup and would probably still not make as much as the Hawks, Wings, Rangers, or Leafs.

This lets fans and pundits say that its these teams' choice to not compete, when really their choice is to not compete or lose millions of dollars. I didn't really post a solution to this issue in the article, because I'm not really sure what the right solution is (aside from relocation)

Obviously the NHL can not come right out and say they want parity. They will use terms like "competitive balance", which is a fancy term for parity, but as you point out, it's hard to believe the NHL wants that. Look at the 2 SCF just before and after the lockout: Tampa-Calgary and Carolina-Edmonton. Not surprisingly, neither was very highly-rated, even if both were pretty good series.

There's not a sports league in North America that doesn't want to see their big market teams succeed except maybe the NFL, which so big it doesn't matter. For a league like the NHL, where revenues are based off of ticket and merchandise sales, this is even more true. There is no big TV deal to add revenue to the league, so the league needs to tap into the large markets to increase sales of everything: tickets, clothing, bobbleheads, video games, you name it.

However, the league can only set up the rules; it's up to the owners of each of the 30 teams to play by them as they see fit. That's why we can point to a team like Carolina, who says they will only spend approx $45M, or just above the cap floor, and say that they have been given the tools (the cap) to compete with the Caps and Pens and Wings but they are choosing not to, so that is their fault. It's one of the main reasons why the Hawks have risen to prominence in the last couple of years: they have taken the shackles off their GM and allowed him to spend some money to bring in talent.

Unfortunately, nothing is going to change. It will be interesting to see how the vote with the NHLPA goes to see if they institute the 5% increase again as they have in the past. I have a bad feeling we are headed towards another stoppage, in which case you may need to learn a whole new CBA. Great stuff!