No Mr. Wyshynski, The Weber Arbitration Was Not Good For Hockey

On this glorious Sunday, August 14, 2011, Greg Wyshynski of the Yahoo! Hockey Blog "Puck Daddy" wrote a brief article on why Shea Weber's arbitration hearing was good for hockey and the NHL. The link to it is here if you want to read it, but in case you're lazy like I am, here is the gist of it. It was a good arbitration hearing because the player received fair compensation. Arbitration is meant to be an incentive to get deals done, and usually ends up with a player getting low-balled, which isn't fair to the player.

Thinking that this hearing was good for anybody (other than Shea Weber), however, is a fallacy. Regardless of whether it reinforced the role of arbitration in negotiating fair deals, it hurt the actual, tangible NHL. Sure on some abstract level this may prove that the processes that the league implements are effective, but this hearing itself is going to have negative impacts in a way that extends beyond labor negotiations. Firstly, it's going to increase wages. Many have written about how, because Weber is so good, he has no comparable, and thus won't be used as precedent in future negotiations. That is, to put it politely, bullshit. Perhaps in arbitration he won't be listed, but do you really think that Luke Schenn, current RFA of the Toronto Maple Leafs, didn't see that award and decide to maybe up his price a little bit? Though the Weber contract may not affect arbitration hearings, it's definitely going to affect UFA signings, RFA signings, and even contract structure. Granted, Weber is among the five best defenseman in the league, along with Zdeno Chara, Drew Doughty, Niklas Lidstrom, and Duncan Keith. However, with a $7.5 million dollar cap hit, you're going to see the base salary of elite defenseman go up. For example, Marc Staal of the New York Rangers is signed to under $4 million dollars a year in cap hit. Once his current contract his up, considering that his new contract will involve UFA years and that he has been the Rangers top defenseman, there is no way he will sign for anything less than $5.5 million dollars. Obviously, the cap increases annually, and so salaries do inevitably get inflated over time. Nevertheless, this Weber deal could inadvertently spark a serious increase in wages for defensemen.

Secondly, it's bad for small market teams. The precedent set by the deal is bad for small market teams as they can't afford to pay talent that much money. However, that isn't as big of an issue. The bigger issue here is that Nashville has been the poster boy for a) winning consistently on a budget and b) successfully operating in a so-called "non traditional" market. A one-year deal for Weber not only removes stability from the franchise, it also raises concerns for future UFA's for the team. The team's core- goalie Pekka Rinne, defenseman Ryan Suter, and defenseman Shea Weber- is going to be on the free agent market in the same season. Locking up Weber would have provided incentive for Rinne and Suter to stick around. Now, however, that incentive is gone, as none of them will have assurance that the others are sticking around. This puts Nashville in a bit of a pickle. It raises questions about the franchise's future success, which hurts fan confidence and community interest, and it also may lead to a dangerous spending spree. According to a few lists that have come out recently, Nashville has one of the worst pipelines in the NHL right now. They don't have enough prospects to fill Weber's (and possibly Suter's and Rinne's) shoes right now. The smart money would have been to expand on last year's success by making a splash in the free agent market. Barry Trotz is a great coach, and the team is set in goal and on the blue line. Acquiring a few more scorers would have capitalized on the excitement that the franchise built during its playoff run last year. Now, instead, they have lost free agents, they have been forced to trade away Cody Franson in a salary dumping move, and are about to head into a season that will most likely determine Nashville's future for the next couple of years.

If Nashville begins to tank, either financially or competitively, it will hurt the League's reputation. It will mean that the Sunbelt Experiment failed. It will also cast a dark shadow on the futures of other small market teams, especially if Weber leaves and finds success elsewhere. So was the hearing itself good for hockey? Sure. It proved that arbitration does what it's supposed to. But was the hearing's product good? Not at all. Let's just hope that Weber truly turns out to have none comparable to him, or else things could begin to get even tougher for the NHL's small market franchises.