I've been. Thinking lately about some potential rule changes that could be interesting and increase entertainment/viewership.

1. Changing the Salary Cap

I would advocate moving towards a system that mixes what the league currently has with what exists in European soccer. In European soccer under Financial Fair Play the max spending of clubs is a % of their revenue. As we all know the NHL's cap is a % of total league revenue split evenly amongst all teams.

So how to combine them? Have some revenues count as team specific and some as league specific. So TV rights are league revenues, NHLShop.com sales are league revenues, league sponsors are league revenues, ticket sales are 50/50 league and team revenues, team sponsors are team revenue.

What this should result in is a salary cap that allows teams like NYR, TML, MON, etc to spend more than teams like Arizona but not WAY more. So instead of everyone having a $85M cap. Arizona's could be $75M and Toronto's could be $95M.

Why do this? (i) it will incentive teams to grow their own markets, (ii) there will be less cap circumvention trades with small market teams, (iii) this will help small markets by increasing league revenues if bigger teams are in the cup finals and there is larger TV revenue, (iv) it lowers the bar for small market teams. Every team isn't expected to win a cup anymore so smaller markets can get big storylines and press around their run to the playoffs, their cup run. We've seen this work with Vegas to attract fans and money. Even Arizona or Buffalo fans are thinking of winning a cup that's what Betman told us any team could do. Imagine if the amazing goal of the Sabres was to just be the underdog that finally broke the streak and made the playoffs. They could have prime time games all season and grow their fanbase. The Salary Cap being equal robs fans of those stories.

So there is my salary cap proposal the cap is 50% of league revenues + 50% of team revenues so.

2. Changing the power play. Here are a few suggestions

A) Penalty ends on a SHG. This would encourage way more teams to play their top forwards while shorthanded.

B) PPG don't end a PP. This would again when combined with the suggestion above make PKs more aggressive and reward good PPs and high skilled players.

C) Scoring on a Delayed Penalty does not negate the PP.

3. Overtime

A) Change to a 10 minute 3 on 3.

B) Remove the shootout.

C) Remove the rule that you lose the 1 point for an OTL if you pull your goalie and the other team scores. Would love to see more coaches pull the goalie for a 4 on 3 and risk it in OT.

Standings

A) change the points to 1-2-3 system to encourage teams not to play for a draw in regulation.

Schedule

A) remove the "every player in every rink" mandate. Teams should play those in the other conference one time per year instead of 2 (alternate home and away each year).

B) make the additional 16 games a year all inter-divisional games so teams can face their own division rivals at least 5 times each season.

Playoffs

A) Let teams pick their playoff opponents. So let's say Boston finished #1 in the East and Atlantic like they did last year. They should get to pick their opponents
They can pick either #2 Atlantic, #3 Atlantic, #1 Wildcard, #2 Wildcard. I'd last year they got to pick between Tampa, Toronto, Florida and Islander who would they pick? Then the #1 in the Metro would get to pick between the #2/#3 in the Metro and the remaining wildcard team. If both wildcard teams were picked it would be 2v3 if a #2 or #3 from a division is picked the remaining team gets to pick their opponents. So if Boston picked Tampa and Carolina picked NYI then Toronto auto gets Florida but if Carolina picked NYR then Toronto can pick between NYI and Florida.

This would reward to places in the regular season more and create more drama around the playoffs and motivation for those lower teams.


I've got more ideas but will leave it at this for now. Thought?

Ahh the Toronto fan crying about the cap screw everyone but the big markets or teams with owners who this is a toy for. How about getting guys more worried about winning than getting max dollar. When you're top 3 guys make over 40% of your cap you can't put a good enough team around them to win. (That 40% is now it was even higher as percentage when they were signed . Manage your cap better Toronto.
This also again seriously drives up salaries making it harder for lesser revenue teams become better driving down their revenue making it a truly uneven playing field

How dare Dubas not predict a worldwide shutdown that would flatten the cap for multiple years right after signing his core!

No but paying 3 players 45% of salary cap at the time of signing is bad cap management which was if you had the reading comprehension ability of a 2nd grader clearly what I was saying, but go ahead and burry your head up your rectum.

Wow, you got pretty defensive there to something that was a joke, talk about reading comprehension. The cap often goes up every year, the flat cap was an anomaly. A benefit of signing the long term deals was supposed to be that they would take up a smaller % of the cap each year as the deal progressed. The Core 4 (minus Tavares) have got better since those deals were signed. This is evident in a flat cap situation, so imagine how good those deals would’ve looked if the cap went up like it was projected to. It was actually very good cap management at the time, hindered by consequences beyond his control.