From: phhill@sn01.sncc.lsu.edu (ROBERT HILL)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.hockey
Subject: Re: Dear Sherri
Date: 9 Apr 92 20:14:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.1992Apr9.200207.15617
Reply-To: phhill@sn01.sncc.lsu.edu
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In article <1992Apr8.214022.3689@ists.ists.ca>, dchhabra@stpl.ists.ca 
(Deepak CHHABRA) writes...
>In article <1992Apr7.180851.19130@adobe.com> snichols@adobe.com 
>(Sherri Nichols) writes:
>>In article <1992Apr7.141330.3602@ists.ists.ca> dchhabra@stpl.UUCP 
>>(Deepak CHHABRA) writes:
>>
>>>Your answer avoids the question, which is 'How can a team with a small 
>>>revenue base compete with a team with a *huge* revenue base without a draft
>>>(and with total free agency, presumably)?.
>>
>>>Let's consider your extreme draft scenarios.  What do you think scouts do?  
>>>You seem to argue that teams go blindly into a draft and pick players for
>>>the hell of it.  This simply isn't true.  The fact of the matter is that all
>>>NHL teams have some type of farm system, in which they do develop talent.
>>
>>I'm not arguing that at all.  What I am arguing is that scouting and
>>developing players is a very difficult task.  The younger you draft
>>players, the more difficult it is.
> 
>This is so true it's borderline tautology.  However, the argument itself in no 
>way strengthens your postion.  Am I to assume that because it is difficult to 
>project the development of a young player, it is also impossible?  Of course 
>it's difficult to predict what someone's going to do in the future.  But the
>point is that weaker teams should have access to better talent than already 
>strong teams in order to maintain some type of balance.  You argue that free 
>agency will work, and the counter-argument is that free agency leads to an 
>auction-type free-for-all.  Baseball already serves as a precedent.   

    But free agency in baseball has not decreased parity. If anything, it has
increased it. Since 1980, every team in the National League has won its 
division at least once. In the American League, only Seattle, Cleveland, and 
Texas have failed to win a division title (I'm not positive about California, 
but I think they won around 1986). How many World Series' have the big market, 
rich teams won lately? In the last several years only the Mets in 1986 and 
the Dodgers in 1988 have won. The other championships have been won by smaller 
market teams (Minnesota twice, Cincinatti, Oakland, and Kansas City). The NY 
Yankees have been horrible for almost a decade now despite all the free agents 
they signed. 
    What this points out is that the competence of a team's management is
far more important in putting together a top level team. This is just as
true in hockey as it is in any other sport. Teams with poor management 
(Leafs, Nordiques, Penguins until 2 years ago) continue to do poorly despite 
the draft "advantage" while well managed teams (Canadiens, Bruins, Oilers)
continue to succeed in spite of the draft.
    Free agency is not going to help a team with poor management. The team
is bad because they do a poor job of evaluating and developing talent. They 
will just go out and sign the wrong free agents or misuse them after they 
sign them. But a poor team which changes its management and gets some smart
people running it can improve itself much more rapidly by signing free agents
than through the draft.

>>>WRONG.  True, a player wants to play.  But he also wants to go to a winner 
>>>that can pay him a lot of money. 
>>
>>True.  But one team can only find room for so many players.  Would a player
>>go to a winner who would pay him lots of money if he were scratched half
>>the time?
> 
>This I don't understand.  Who in their right mind would pay a guy 'lots of 
>money' with the intent not to play him??  Your question implies by tense the
>player joining the team in the future, getting paid in the future, and being 
>benched in the present.  *NOT* feasible.  Very rarely are highly-paid players
>benched.  The reason they're highly-paid in the first place is because they
>perform.  But since you seem to enjoy answering questions with questions, how
>about this: How many players would go from playing zero minutes per game on
>a team paying them $500 000(a) to playing 30 minutes per game on a team paying
>them $250 000(a)?

      But why would the first team sign the player for $500,000 in the first
place if they weren't going to use him. Don't forget that the owners' 
motivation for putting together a competitive team is to make a profit. 
Signing the $500,000 player and then not playing him does nothing to increase
the team's revenue, so signing him is equivalent to throwing away the money.
Any given team is only going to try to sign enough good/top players as they
need to keep the seats filled and the TV contract lucrative. In most cases,
this means putting together a team that can be considered a legitimate 
contender most years.
      The hypothetical player above is going to be much more valuable to a
team who needs him to help make the team more attractive to potential fans.
Hence they are more likely to offer him the higher salary. This will tend
to distribute good players among the teams rather than concentrate them
on any one team.
      However, with unrestricted free agency and no revenue sharing or 
salary cap, it will still be possible for the richest teams to acquire
several of the very best players in the game by offering salaries the 
smaller market teams can't afford. The solution to this is to institute
a salary cap and revenue sharing, not go back to a draft system.

Bob