CCHL per game revenue vs. the NHL salary cap

With the recent announcement of the NHL salary cap increasing dramatically over the next three seasons, the CCHL Commissioner and financial czar has gone to work on what that means for the CCHL.  

It is always an interesting process and balancing act between the NHL cap and the CCHL spend due to the 10 team disparity between the leagues.  The CCHL also allows 30 man rosters where the NHL allows for 23 man rosters, creating further disparity.  

The net effect is that with an average CCHL roster of 29 players, that really means that six more teams worth of salaries are added within the 22 team CCHL, thus the CCHL pays for 28 NHL teams worth of players.  

That is about the equivalent of 88% of NHL team's worth of rosters playing in the CCHL.  Conversely, when doing the calculations I've always aimed to hit that 90% mark.  If you love numbers, this blog is likely interesting to you but if they don't excite you, you probably already hate it!  

The reality is that the finances are always a delicate balancing act because we need the finances to count as a league, but not to the point where teams are dying on the vine trying to operate.  This year is different as the dispersal draft clawed back some of the expansion money teams got so I expect everyone should lose money if you added anything of significance from that dispersal draft.  

The interesting wrinkle to the NHL releasing three years worht of expected salary cap upper-limits is that it can allow us as a league to also plan where league revenues for games are going.  

Again, the balancing act here is that rebuilding teams for finances shouldn't be able to struggle for a year with a ridiculously low payroll and be financially healthy again so the losers money cannot be too high, while the winner's cash also cannot be too high.  

The risk of making the winner's money too high is that it could drive salaries wild in free agency, and we saw a bit of that with Kucherov last year, but that's more an exception to the rule as he's likely the best player that's EVER hit free agency in the CCHL.  The reality is though, he's not likely alone because I certainly can see a world where McDavid and Matthews are making $20 million in cap hits in a few years so it's something to think about.  

In any event, the key to the calculation is figuring out what the median wins/losses/SOL or OTL's are around the league to see how much on average is generated per team.  That process is just finishing up and being reviewed versus the desire to hit 90% of NHL spending.  

Much like the NHL, we'll have those numbers out shortly after discussing as an executive committee, but I thought it was pertinent given the recent NHL announcements to explain that it's being worked on and how it's all being calculated.  

If you thought it was a number out of thin air, you'd be mistaken.  I think over the years the process has become even more refined to capture the accuracy and link between NHL expense and the CCHL.