What if we move (most) players before they need to be paid market rate?
It depends on what you mean by "most" No team is going to draft/develop well enough that they can just replace good secondary players whenever they want and those are the guys you're going to lose. Imagine what kind of cap situation Chicago would be in if Hossa/Keith were getting paid what they should cap hit wise. That's the environment the Leafs will be building in.
But don't you get saved by inflation in that case to a certain degree? Hossa's deal at the time was probably considered to be a slight underpayment but still fair. I'll agree that Keith should probably fire his agent.
Hossa's deal was only possible at that price point because of the rules at the time about structuring deals. If Hossa was really looking to maximize his dollars he probably could have gotten 7 or 7.5 per.
And re: inflation, as we're seeing this year that's anything but a certainty going forward.
True. I guess I was confusing inflation on the individual contracts versus the inflation of the overall cap. You hear people use that as an excuse on some these deals that players sign. He got x amount of dollars, and that looks like a lot, but in three years time it's going to look like he's underpaid.
I'm not really sure that even applies anymore. I'm not sure Brian Campbell's deal will ever look like an underpayment. But that might be more of a bad contract versus a good one.