Damien Cox: NHL free-agent spending is out of control. The impact of the pandemic changed nothing

It was another week for the economics of the NHL to defy the laws of, well, economics.

This is a league, let’s not forget, that has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 18 months because of COVID-19. Maybe a billion. Maybe more.

To deal with these losses, the NHL has added about 25 NHL jobs through expansion. This has happened at a time when all 31 teams were limited to just 28 home games in the 2020-21 season. For those games, the seven Canadian teams were able to entertain no fans in their buildings, and the rest had partial crowds.

Have we illustrated accurately the nature of the NHL’s misery during the pandemic? The only uptick has been selling decals on helmets and cutting a new TV deal south of the border, for the tiny percentage of Americans who actually watch.

Despite the depths of this financial despair, teams went out and spent wildly this week on free agents. Not just any free agents. Players who, for the most part, aren’t stars. Players who generally don’t drive attendance or play at such a level that they can really be described as difference-makers.

On Wednesday, the first day of free agency, NHL clubs signed 163 players to contracts worth $785 million (U.S.), according to Capfriendly.com. On the second day, they spent another $133 million.

Some of that, about $76 million, went to Brayden Point of the Tampa Bay Lightning, a legitimate star on the best team in the league. Logical.

Zach Werenski, who plays defence at an elite level for the talent-hemorrhaging Columbus Blue Jackets, got $57.5 million. He’s not near the best of the best, but he’s getting there.

There were some other very good players who got paid, such as defencemen Dougie Hamilton and Seth Jones. After that, however, it really was an orgy of spending on average to good players.

Why? Well, under the NHL’s salary-cap system teams collectively spend 50 per cent of revenue on player salaries. So they spend even at a time when nobody really knows what revenues are, or are going to be.

Hard-working Zach Hyman struck it rich in Edmonton. Free-agent spending is just as out of control as it was before the pandemic, Damien Cox writes.

Check out some of the deals:

The new Seattle Kraken gave centre Alex Wennberg a three-year contract worth $13.5 million. Wennberg is a failed former Columbus first-rounder who scored 17 goals for Florida this year, his first solid season.

Columbus gave forward Sean Kuraly $10 million over four years. Kuraly is 28 and has never scored more than eight goals in an NHL season.

Zach Hyman received a seven-year contract from Edmonton, worth $38.5 million. Everybody loves Hyman, an industrious player, but his next 25-goal season will be his first despite lots of time playing with the likes of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner in Toronto.

Derek Forbort signed a three-year contract with Boston for $3 million per season. Forbort played defence for Winnipeg last season. He’s never scored more than two goals in an NHL season.

Nick Bonino got $2.1 million from San Jose for each of the next two years. He’s 33 and has one 20-goal season. That was in 2013-14.

Barclay Goodrow got $22 million from the Rangers for six seasons. His former Tampa linemate Blake Coleman did even better, getting $29.4 million from Calgary for six seasons. Goodrow and Coleman combined for 20 goals last season.

None of this is meant to pick on those particular contracts or players. Good for them. No man who ever works for another man is ever overpaid, right? Moreover, we could easily highlight a bunch of other deals.

The point is, even in these distressed times NHL teams continue to do what they have always done, which is not pay the best players nearly enough and wildly overpay the middle class.

Here’s all you need to know: Next season, 28 NHL players will have a higher cap hit than Sidney Crosby.

Crosby will make $9 million. The maximum he could make is about $16 million. Buffalo’s Jeff Skinner, who scored seven goals last season, will make $1 million more in salary than Crosby. This is a logical economic system?

If the NHL actually made sense, the top 50 players would be making double their current salaries and the other 700 would make less than $1 million. It makes a lot of sense for Edmonton to pay Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl a combined $21 million, for example, and no sense to pay Hyman $5.5 million or Zack Kassian $3.2 million.

So, what we witnessed over the past few days was the NHL continuing to compensate players the same way it has for years, despite all the financial losses it has had to bear. No leaner, meaner NHL. Not possible under the current collective agreement with the players.

This has also happened just months after the league and players agreed on a new deal that will see escrow — the amount of a player’s pay withheld in case total salaries exceed 50 per cent of revenue — capped at a decreasing number over the next five seasons, including only six per cent for the final three years.

How the owners plan to recoup their losses at the same time the players may end up taking more than 50 per cent of the pie is difficult to understand. But apparently teams feel OK about it, thus the spending we’ve seen this week.

For fans of the Maple Leafs, perhaps unhappy that their team didn’t add more talent, the best news may be that they didn’t get entangled in any new, expensive contracts. Thin gruel, indeed.

The strangest thing? All that money spent, and the balance of power across the NHL really didn’t change much. It was entertaining, to be sure, but not particularly meaningful.