Having watched my first NHL game this year (Wings vs. Blues), I'm pretty excited. Having hockey back is awesome. I know they have?long way to go to win back just the fan base they had before the lockout, let alone winning a bigger audience. But for me, I'm watching, and will be all year.

Anyway, one of the most important things the NHL did was implement a cap - a hard cap. But questions are being raised about how strict it will be enforced. The gist is this: If a team wants to pay a player $6,000,000 per year, they may opt to sign him to a $3,000,000 contract and then offer a sponsor a $3,000,000 discount to advertise with the team, and have a gentleman's agreement to sign the player to a $3,000,000 endorsement contract.

Now,?as the comments to the post?make it clear that this type of agreement wouldn't be allowed under the new collective bargaining agreement, but ultimately, it's up to the NHL to enforce it. One commenter makes a statement that, since it's Gary Bettman, that he'll obviously enforce it. But is that the case? Bettman hasn't exactly done much up until he was able to hold his ground against the NHLPA, but he was only able to do that because he had the backing of the owners. Another commenter says teams won't even attempt this because this is the deal they wanted. That's not true. A team like Detroit has always been willing to pay $60,000,000+ a year on salaries and still make money. It wasn't Detroit calling for a hard cap. Nor was it Colorado, New York or any of the big market, successful?teams.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if any owners try to "game the system" and extend the cap.

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