Can anyone shed any light on this stuff?
You rang?
Post lockout, the NHL now has a Collective Bargaining Agreement where the most profitable franchises pitch in a portion of their profits and that money is then shared with smaller, less well performing (marketwise, not on the ice) teams. This allows them to meet payroll and compete with the new salary cap, which is usually much more than their total salary was before the cap was in place.
A few years ago, the Versus TV deal only paid each team $2 Million each, which is small potatoes compared to larger sports. If you add NBC and their local affiliate, most American hockey team pull in $6 million per franchise($8 million for most Canadian franchises). That's less than 10% of the salary cap, so teams have to rely on ticket sales, which in small markets have been down. Thus the popular teams (NY Rangers, Montreal, Toronto, Philly) subsidize the less popular teams.
And yes, generally, the remaining Canadian teams are outperforming their US counterparts, save for the Rangers and Philly.
