This came up in the other thread but I wanted to split if off into its own topic.
Last year, when we realized that cap space was getting slightly too high, we decided to use a new equation to adjust the cap on a yearly basis relative to the NHL salary cap. This equation factors in NHL cap inflation and measures available cap space in the NHL vs available cap space in DNHL and tries to keep them relative. But the equation is somewhat flawed since a DNHL team can have $30m in cap space, while NHL teams have to meet a cap floor of $19m less than the cap ceiling. I know almost everything out there says the floor is $16m, but it's actually $19m this season at least.
As Corey pointed out that makes it hard to stay relative - even though we currently only have 1 team that would fall below the floor. A better way to do this is to adjust the equation to use the $19m figure in place of any figures that exceed the floor. So in our case, Arizona would be entered as $19m instead of $29.7m.
I started doing the math to find out what kind of effect this would have on the projected 17/18 cap. To my dismay, I realized I made a mistake in the original calculations, using cap figures that included IR and demoted salaries...
For future reference, I need to remember to use Spotrac (I made a note in the rules so this doesn't happen again).
Now I started doing the math all over again and I'm surprised to tell you all that our cap is VERY close to NHL relative. I did this both ways - the old way without factoring in a floor and the newly proposed way including a floor.
The old way (no floor)
-NHL salary cap increased by about 2.2%, increasing our cap by that much brings us to $81.1M
-DNHL average cap space is $6.2m, NHL average is $5.7m, a difference of $0.5M
-$81.1M - $0.5M = $80.6M
Result - Salary cap increase of $1.3M
New proposal (with virtual floor)
-NHL salary cap increased by about 2.2%, increasing our cap by that much brings us to $81.1M
-DNHL average cap space is $5.7m, NHL average is $5.7m, a difference of $0.0M
-$81.1M - $0.0M = $81.1
Result - Salary cap increase of $1.8M
What this tells me is our previous measures to balance cap space have worked way faster than we thought - or that contract inflation and FA costs have helped it catch up faster (thank you Capitals...).
I would like to apologize for my mistake and propose that we update the cap based on Corey's idea of using the virtual floor. I put up a poll to gauge opinion on this. I plan to move forward fairly soon, unless there's an upheaval of disagreement. Post your thoughts.
I would also like to apologize for making you guys read so much lately.
