Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke once said that July 1, the first day of free agency, is one of the two days in the season that managers across the league lose their minds (the trade deadline being the other day). That that is generally true, in that managers often overpay for players that they think will turn their team into the one that will beat the 3.3 percent odds of winning a Stanley Cup. Though many contracts are not actually signed while a player is a free agent, these massive, high-dollar contracts clearly created an epidemic within the NHL (for better or worse).
Case in point: the New Jersey Devils signing Ilya Kovalchuk to a 15-year, $100 million deal; the Vancouver Canucks locking up Roberto Luongo for 12 years, at a cool price of $64 million; the New York Islanders keeping Rick Dipietro for 15 years and $67.5 million; the Tampa Bay Lightning nabbing Vincent Lecavalier for 11 years and $85 million.
Forgetting the length of these deals though, take a look at the dollar amounts, in addition to these players, among the highest paid for the upcoming 2012-13 season (in terms of salary, not cap hit): Buffalo’s Tyler Myers, $12 million. New York’s Brad Richards, $12 million. Buffalo’s Christian Ehrhoff, $8 million.
Notice a trend? Not yet? What if I told you that 10 of the top 15 players, in terms of salary, came from smaller market teams? See the trend now? Vancouver, New York Islanders, Tampa Bay, Buffalo…
Nothing against the small market teams, but why is it that the ones who are known to have less money are the ones signing players to higher salaries?
According to an April 16 article in Scientific American Mind by Daisy Grewal – and in addition to dozens of psychological studies – reminding people of stereotypes against them often drastically changes their behavior, specifically in how they attempt to achieve high status. One famous psychological study found that if you remind African Americans about their stereotypes, they are willing to pay twice as much for a luxury item than the average Caucasian. Another study found that lower-class citizens who are reminded of their position in the social scale eat much more, attempting to compensate for their being perceived as “low status.”
Moving back to hockey (and professional sports in general), small market teams are subject to the criticism of large market media – Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, New York, etc. And that’s putting it lightly. How many times have we seen major newspapers claim that cities like Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Nashville, and others, are “not worthy” of or “can’t support” an NHL team? Quite often, in fact.
By constantly being reminded of their “low status,” in terms of social and business standing in the NHL, perhaps these small market teams are overpaying for players and dishing out great deals of money, subconsciously to seem like they are a higher market team – like they are of equal status of a team like the Detroit Red Wings, who were famous for their all-star-like teams of the late 1990s and the early 2000s, with payrolls nearing $100 million.
This is not to say that small market teams should not sign free agents or sign beloved players to large deals. It’s simply to say that there is always a possibility that a decision is made for a reason other than one having to do with on-ice performance – whether a manager consciously knows it or not.
Alan Bass, a former writer for The Hockey News and THN.com, is the author of "The Great Expansion: The Ultimate Risk That Changed The NHL Forever." You can contact him at [email protected], or on Twitter at @NHL_AlanBass. 
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