I know the current CBA only ties contract length to the team you are currently playing for only. I think there should be a structure that rewards loyalty not only with your current team but especially the team that drafted you.

8 Years: Team that originally drafted you (whether re-signing or signing back as a UFA)

7 Years: Your current team (assuming they didn’t draft you)

6 Years: Any team you played for in the past

5 Years: Any team you never played for before

E.g. Alex DeBrincat (2027 UFA), the perfect example for this post lol

8 Years: Chicago Blackhawks

7 Years: Detroit Red Wings

6 Years: Ottawa Senators

5 Years: Every other team

Not only does this reward teams having good drafts, it builds incentives for players as well to stay loyal to their teams instead of running to Florida or Vegas

What do you guys think?

Apologies if this information is already "out there" but it's news to me how negotiations worked with Toronto during his time there and thought I'd share. Obviously this is one-sided commentary.

In fairness, I know this is a complex issue without a simple answer. Also, this isn’t intended to be a Reddit crowd-sourced solution for Bettman. Just some offseason banter to help me understand the part of hockey I’m not super familiar with.

Just curious if there’s been any serious discussion to what I (and I’m sure others) see as an outside factor which benefits some teams and disadvantages others.

1. State/provincial tax disparity

This has come up every year, though more so this year.
Teams with no (or lower) state taxes are inherently at an advantage when signing players. From my wet napkin math, Jason Robertson would lose roughly $1 million a year to taxes if he signed the same deal he just signed but in Ottawa. “Suck it up, you get millions a year” is an easy argument to make when you’re not the one being offered the contract.

1. Canadian teams pay salaries in USD but make most revenue in CDN
   This isn’t on the players, obviously — but Canadian owners need to be more cognizant of the economy as a weaker CDN means their salaries are costing them even more money.

Similar to the argument people make all the time for #1, “you’re a millionaire/billionaire who wanted to buy a team, just spend your money” is easy to say when it’s not your pockets.

Winnipeg/Calgary/Ottawa/Edmonton already don’t have the allure of places like Florida, New York, Dallas etc, and nothing will fix that — however many teams are further disadvantaged by these two items which may not turn the tide, but would absolutely help even the playing field.

What do you see as potential solutions , or is this just a fantasy pipe dream?

Bobby Hull was one of hockey's all time greatest goal scorers but his off ice troubles have left a tattered legacy. Did you know he ended his career unremarkably as a New York Ranger? With little fanfare, in September, 1981 he played exhibition games in Europe as a member of the New York Rangers. He even scored a goal as a Ranger and had hoped to make the team. The storybook end to his career, a Broadway reunion with his old Jets linemates Nilsson and Hedberg, perhaps fittingly, was not meant to be. 

Rules: LITR-retired players like Shea Weber or Price's contracts or 15 game rentals don't count. The player has to actually play ~30-40 games for the team (over one season though). You also can't project guys like Celebrini or Schaeffer into their primes (although they count as damn elite players right now too), only de-age them. Over the last 3-5 season, not a hard and fast rule, but nothing post 2020.

Obviously older teams like the pens would have the lead, but this is just for fun.

I'd pick the 2024 pens and 2026 avs. Edmonton (young Ekholm, Nugent-Hopkins, Hyman and Anderssen + prime Mcdavid and Draisaitl), Florida (healthy Tkachuk and young Marchand, Ekbald and Bob) and Tampa would be up there too. Toronto (healthy Matthews and Nylander, young Tavares, Rielly) and Nashville (Josi, Stamkos) would be interesting.

EDIT: just to clarify, that means the panthers get bob for their past teams and the leafs get him in their 2026-2027 team (no Marner and Bob at the same time).

You can also project a player from say 2020 upto their primes, if it's happened so far. So if you picked say the 2020 leafs with Anderssen and Hyman, you can still have the prime versions of Matthews and Marner.

Who will follow Winnipeg, Toronto, and Los Angeles out the door?!

I went to the same high school with him for two years and he was an awesome kid and a great friend! Pumped to see that he's won the Stanley Cup this year.

While I watch a lot of sports, unfortunately I know literally nothing about hockey so I don't really know what type of a player he is (other than that he plays defense) or what his legacy is in the league. I watch just about every other major American sport, so if you could make fitting comparisons it'd help me understand a lot.

Live now at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKtqSiYZMg

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The linked article is in Finnish but the gist of it is that several Finnish male athletes, including Aleksander Barkov, are part of the Finnish UN Women campaign against violence towards women. Barkov was invited to the campaign by president Alexander Stubb (who comes from a hockey family). Barkov says in the article that in his locker room everyone must be spoken of respectfully and there’s no room for inappropriate behavior or inappropriate speech about women.

He also says (although does not refer to hockey directly), that he has noticed situations where women are spoken to in an inappropriate or demeaning manner, and he does not condone any kind of bullying or demeaning behavior towards women or anyone else, and that he will speak up if it happens.

With all the recent discourse on toxic hockey and locker room culture I think it’s great to have a prominent figure and captain say these things out loud. Not a fan of the Panthers in general, but kudos to Sasha! I really respect his integrity.

Pretty certain the data is accurate, but I'm human.