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MyLittleHexx · 01-29-2023, 11:02 PM

Hockey Prompt:
I think the NHL cap is good overall. It helps promote some parity in the league, preventing teams with deep pockets from buying the best talent. It forces teams to be smart with the contracts they hand out. It may limit the amount of offensive power a team can have, but it also encourages different teams to make playoffs every year. I don't follow the NBA, but it feels like every year it's the same 4 teams that really make waves. Teams that front load their roster, so you end up with the same final few teams year after year until the contracts given come back to harm them. Where the NHL is a lot more diverse as far as playoffs go. You still have your same handful of teams that make it year after year, but it fluctuates and it isn't a guarantee those teams are in the finals. Though for the star players, the cap harms how much they are able to earn. Players are looked upon to take cheaper contracts in the hopes of winning a cup.

Marcul_le_depanneur · 01-29-2023, 11:08 PM

CREATIVE PROMPT - Written Task

First thing first, I’ll take some of that sweet sweet money to upgrade the food facilities. As professional athletes, we deserve the best grub money can buy. As such, I would take a part of the money given to me to hire Gordon Ramsey as the personal chef for the team and have him travel with us on our away games. I think upgrading the food the team gives to its players would make us a more attractable destination for free agents in the league and upgrade the general mood of our locker room.

After this, I think upgrading our film room would be a big plus. Let’s toss out those old boring folding chairs and bring in the biggest lazy-boys on the market. I’ll add a full cinema sized screen in the room. Finally, I’ll add a popcorn machine in the room to allow the boys to snack during the film seances.

Atox · 01-29-2023, 11:18 PM

I think the NHL salary cap is fine as it is. That likely has to do with the fact that I am not an NHL GM and therefore do not interact with the salary cap beyond CapFriendly. There are things that the NHL doesn’t have that makes it difficult to be more savvy since any player’s respective cap hit is determined by their AAV, and pro-rated if traded to another team during the season*. There’s salary retainment and buyouts that can affect a player’s cap hit but that’s it. Compared to the NFL which has a whole assortment of tools to help reduce a player’s cap hit such as void years and contract restructuring that uses the rule of bonuses being pro-rated thru the contract. It would be nearly impossible to apply any of this as it would require moving away from simple AAV and would completely change roster construction. You could theoretically get a team that loads up on talent thru these methods for one year, but then has to blow up due to these tactics pushing a greater cap hit in the long term

*Cap hit is not pro-rated if the receiving team is cap compliant thru LTIR

mastersheep · 01-29-2023, 11:23 PM

I think the salary cap is mostly fine as it is. While I partly would be interested to see how a league works where teams have unlimited spending, you would likely get something similar to what happens in the world of soccer where pretty much the best teams continue to dominate and who wants a world where the Maple Leafs actually have the ability to dominate? However as a small argument against it, you still see even when a cap is in place, many teams are still plagued with mismanagement and don’t spend even when their team is good. The Panthers, for example, followed up their best season in a long time by firing their coach and trading away their best player in a deal that seems to have worked out terribly for everyone involved. Perhaps that is still beneficial though as you separate the better run teams from the poorly run ones and money ends up not making a large difference.

***brickwall35*** · 01-29-2023, 11:28 PM

Creative Prompt:

Luckily, the ownership group of the Montreal Patriotes doesn't try to cheap out when it comes to the facilities for the players. All Montreal players have access to state-of-the-art health and fitness facilities, medical and training staff, as well as a kitchen of chefs to make any desired meals, fresh and on demand. If Brick had three million dollars lying around, he would probably focus on non-hockey upgrades. A focus on unwinding and destressing. Things like a dedicated gaming area for the boys, as well a small multipurpose field area for things like soccer, kickball, catch, etc. In the locker room, Wall would install some high end speakers and stereos do really get the most of the pregame music playlist. Other than that, Brick would talk to his teammates! I'm sure there are some things they'd like improved that he doesn't necessarily care about. It's important as a leader on the team that everyone is heard and taken care of!

juniped · 01-29-2023, 11:29 PM

CREATIVE PROMPT - Wow! All those improvements you made to the neighborhood around the arena have really paid off! People love the area more than ever. Attendance is at an all time high, and your franchise is making money hand over fist. Since you did such great work with the city, you've been given $3 million and asked to turn your eye to the team's needs!

Wow three Million! I’ve never seen that kind of money. First of all the team needs much more fighting training. I would spend 2.5 million hiring the best fighting instructors the world had to offer. I’m talking, the best MMA, WWE, Boxing, and maybe influencers turned boxer. Using this training we could scare every player on the other teams into being scared of us. The last $0.5 million will be spent on nothing any less important than that. We need new seats with self cleaning waterbed like surfaces. I mean imagine if every single seat you sat on in the stadium was a WATERBED. Like imagine how cool that would be. Now they have to be self cleaning otherwise thgat would be a pain to clean. Oh also they have to be heated because this is a hockey rink and ice is cold I hear. So heated self cleaning waterbed seats would be probably more than 5 million but hey you have to start somewhere, maybe half could be done.

JNH · 01-29-2023, 11:35 PM

First thing we're doing is getting a hot tub for the locker room. Ain't nothing better than finishing a game and letting the muscles relax in a hot tub. Next thing we're doing is upgrading the theater in the arena. Partially because it'll be nice to be comfier while reviewing game tape, but also because I want to watch the new Marvel releases on the big screen and if the seats don't recline, what're we doing here? We should have a fair bit of money left over so the next upgrade is going to go into the visitors locker room. We're removing anything cushion-y and soft, we're taking the hooks off the walls, we're disconnecting the hot water supply and we're making sure that only half of the outlets work. Chicago shouldn't be a fun place to play and we're going to work to make sure that teams dread coming here. There's no rules on this here, so let's make it even more of a hostile environment.

Roobacca · 01-29-2023, 11:35 PM

First thing that gets upgraded with the 3 million is the actual lockers. The old ones were getting pretty old and the wood was starting to splinter and no team bonding activities prepare you for pulling splinters out of a teammates backside. The new ones are still going to be wood but a nice deep mahogany with walnut and birch inlay. I feel like these will really give the place some class. Second the lighting will be updated, with the ugly, harsh incandescent lighting replaced with some recessed leds in the ceiling and under the benches. Finally the fun stuff. The team got together and decided that what the locker room really needed was a hot tub. We didn't just stop there though. This is not your average hot tub. This is instead a full wet sauna that comes up from the knights logo in the middle of the room immediately after the final horn at home games. Luxury.

*Count Chocula* · 01-29-2023, 11:41 PM

CREATIVE PROMPT

With all that money I could finally upgrade the Berserkers Locker Room into a legitimate world class training facility. The first thing I would do is remove Steve Harrington's corpse from the basement, it is really starting to stink up the joint. My second order of business would be to add a gaming lounge to the training facility, in an effort to build teamwork and comradery. We would have sessions of League of Legends and Overwatch matches to work on our communication and build trust amongst each other. My final upgrade would be a complete overhaul of the team kitchen. The meals in Newfoundland are garbage. Coming from France, I am used to the finest dining in the world. I would bring in an elite team of French chefs to prepare all meals for practice and game days. The team and I would improve our diet in order to achieve the optimum game performance.

W:154

*Flowseidon* · 01-29-2023, 11:42 PM

I think that the salary cap in the NHL is important in the way that it helps bring parity to the league, and stops the uber rich teams from just being able to completely ignore things in the sense that they might be able to in a league with a luxury tax. In terms of improvements, I would like to see something akin to what we do here in the SHL in terms of promoting home grown players. This will help emphasize good drafting and good scouting, but allow teams to retain a competitive advantage in keeping a star or any drafted player as part of their roster. For this, I would see something small like 5-10% of their salary doesn't count towards the cap. While it doesn't make a huge splash, it would help teams entice players to stay, and be able to maintain their roster, particularly if they had done very well in drafting

Symmetrik · 01-29-2023, 11:47 PM

I think the NHL salary cap at it's core is good. Having a salary cap is important, and it's far better than an unregulated system, or a system like the NBA. There's still a lot of things in the NHL salary cap that I think need a lot of work, but I know it's also an insanely complicated system. We talk in a really zoomed out way of looking at the cap, but in reality, the NHL salary cap isn't a year long system. It's week-to-week. The trade deadline can work the way it does because 80% of the season's salary has already been paid. It's far more complicated than most of us can understand. Would I like to see it simplified and increased? Yes. Escrow is bad for the players. I also understand why escrow is there. Players and owners get a 50/50 split of profit, but it's all based on a forecast. It would be nice to see a better system that doesn't require such steep amounts.

Dewalt27 · 01-29-2023, 11:48 PM

Oh baby! 3m for upgrades? we're getting a whole new locker room from the ground up. This thing is going to get decked out with sick custom oak lockers. We'll add a spa and sauna in there and get some cryogenic chambers but we're going to make sure no one burns their feet like antonio brown. We spend a ton of time there so we're going to add a few flat screen TVs and some PS5 and Xbox as well as Wii fitness so we can stay in shape. We're going to add a few of the slide mats to work on stick handling and of course we're going to have a pop bar that is full of all coke and Dr.pepper products. the last thing to top it all off will be a proper gaming table that is custom built for team DND and board game nights

JMacNCheese · 01-29-2023, 11:51 PM

Quote:HOCKEY PROMPT - This is a more broad hockey question that kind of relates to the idea of surpluses and budgets. Whatever, who cares, take it easy on me.

Written Task: What is your opinion on the NHL salary cap? Is it great? Bad? Needs improvement? Tell me why. Is there another league that has a cap structure you like more? Do you have a compelling argument for removing it all together? Would allowing teams that could afford to spend extra money on players be too unfair in this day and age? What do you think? (150+ words)

I am all for a salary cap and I think that sports with no cap or a soft cap are dumb. Now that I said that I think the salary cap should be increased to pay the players more. Don't get me wrong, what players make is a lot to a normal working person and the amount of money that some players in sports make is unreal and simply dumb. I know these players put everything into their craft and work, but some people make an absurd amount of money and it’s disgusting. I would like to see the NHL cap increase and maybe not to the extent of the NFL but definitely more than what they currently are at. I do think that if there was no cap it would definitely skew the game, just like in baseball and mostly in basketball. With a salary cap it keeps the league fresh to a sense and makes it so that all teams relatively have an even playing field. Allows for more disparity and I am all for that, but NHL should up theirs so that these players can make more than what they do now.

(192 words)

Toivo · 01-29-2023, 11:56 PM

Hockey

I don’t know if the salary cap is functioning the way it should. I agree with the idea of a salary cap, but it’s questionable when players can miss entire seasons and then come back for playoffs and the teams have salaries in the playoffs far exceeding the cap. What is the solution? Do they extend team salary cap to the playoffs? I think that would make some sense, however, it might limit player movement from the minors to the big league. Those legitimate player moves could be affected by extending the salary cap. Perhaps, the salary cap for the playoffs should be just a few million more than the salry cap in the regular season. This would allow for some flexibility, but would stop the instances of having way more salary in the playoffs than in the regular season. I don’t think this problem is the most pressing thing for the league to tackle. But it’s one of those things that could be abused on a larger scale going forward if the league does not act.

Jepox · 01-30-2023, 12:08 AM

Creative Written Prompt

After the amazing upgrades made around the Atlanta Inferno arena by fan favourite superstar forward Pablo "Picasso" Salvatici the Georgia based franchise was given a generous grant of 3 million dollars to spend however they pleased. Obviously they put Pablo in charge of that as well since his last changes were so well received. Since so many of the Atlanta players are amphibious or spend a majority of their time in and around water, a brand new $1,000,000 swimming pool was installed in the training room. Players such as P.E.E. @hotdog and Puddles O'Duck @Z-Whiz spend much of their time there. The remaining money was spent on various upgrades around the arena. Restrooms and concessions were improved, and the seats were all made into the comfy padded seats that season ticket holders only previously got access to. Finally, the arena wifi would be upgraded because Pablo is sick and tired of not being able to look at his phone in the locker room.

163 words

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