I would go with a franchise tag.
I think Miller suggested different terms for drafted guys, like 7 or 8 years for them and 5 for free agents. Similar to what we have now.
One free draftee contract, however that still plays very much into the have vs have nots. Rangers, Leafs, Habs all can afford 15 million and it not count against the cap. Arizona buys LTIR guys to reach the floor so they wouldn't benefit from this.
- Aaron_85
There are any number of issues with this. It starts to create more "basketball" type sign & trades and starts to lessen the impact of free agency. Not only would fewer players be available as free agents, but the signing teams would end up losing more and more assets as they tried to stay relevant as they aged - in other words I'm paying 1sts & 2nds at the TDL to get guys to keep me competitive - or I'm paying 1sts & 2nds at the FA window to try and make a deal to get a guy I like long-term.
If you get into discounted policies, it makes some of those players much harder to trade. The idea of a "free" 15 million player is ludicrous in my opinion.
I'm not saying there aren't improvements that could be made, but honestly - boo hoo. All teams that draft well have to start making hard decisions on which assets they keep and which they flip into different role players or different assets or futures.
You stay relevant longer by doing this. Forcing a model that forces you overpay guys (because the players will use this as leverage) still puts the "have" teams in jeopardy of exceeding their own budgets and not having the ability to move away from those contracts.
There is a LOT to be considered when you remember that any plan that's introduced has to not only be considerate of the owner's and players' wallets, but it also has to support parity. If you introduce a policy that favours Toronto over Arizona, you create a 'league for thee but not for me' by construct.
I've always said that, and I believe it. Baseball's model is preposterous to me, and while I firmly believe that it will survive our lifetime, it doesn't have a sustainable model. There are basically 6 or 7 teams that can afford to truly compete in that landscape and more than 20 feeder teams. Maybe a feeder team gets lucky once in a while and people use them to cite that the system isn't broken, but the system is broken.
