I honestly have been constantly pretty conflicted about the current salary cap structure in the NHL and it's effects on player transactions, player salary, and long-term roster viability - especially in comparison the other 3 major North American sport leagues.

So, say the NHL had a luxury tax system like in baseball. This is probably the most commonly suggested alternative to the so-called "hard cap" employed by the NHL. While this system does have it's advantages for players and team salary structures, there are obviously some major drawbacks as well. The big downside is that there will always be haves and have-not's, with some teams barely spending to the floor and forgoing team success, while others spend far and above the base cap to bring in as much premium talent as possible.

Coming from a purely financial perspective, this wouldn't work as well for NHL teams - having a bad roster in the MLB one thing because most franchises are lucrative enough to bring in profit even when the team sucks. This isn't the same in the NHL, and every team would eventually have to attempt to compete to satisfy a paying audience. So in that regard it might evade one of the biggest pitfalls of it's implementation in major league baseball. On the other hand though, teams like the leafs, rangers, and habs would sign every big free agent and choke a lot of those smaller markets out of contention, which would cripple competition. (243 words)