Florida Is Hockeytown
Mike Leitao ~ 07/07/2025
As NHL free agency is underway and teams in states with no state income tax already looked poised to make another run at the Stanley Cup next year (seriously I imagine the favorites to win the cup right now are the Florida Panthers and the Vegas Golden Knights), the topic of if those teams have advantages is still as hot as ever. Last week I discussed the argument for implementing changes to balance the salary cap to eliminate these advantages. Today, I’ll discuss the opposite side, why changing the rules would be dumb and unfair. I’ll also give my final opinions on what I truthfully think the best next steps are when it comes to the salary cap and taxes.
We just saw some players in Florida take some decent discounts to stay in Florida, and many people point to the tax rules as to why, but has anyone thought that maybe, just maybe, Florida has built a winning team and players want to win more than make the max amount of money possible. If the taxes were always such a big advantage, why have the Panthers not won a cup until 2024? The Panthers went through many years of very bad hockey and very low attendance and many people saying hockey couldn’t survive in south Florida. It took the Panthers a long time to build this team, and it was not built by having a tax advantage. If you look at their top players, you find a lot of players that were drafted there, traded there, or paid fair market value for. Barkov, Lundell, and Ekblad were all players drafted to the Panthers and in the case of Barkov and Ekblad, were players picked 2nd and 1st overall respectively. Relevant names like Rodrigues, Verhaeghe, Mikkola, Forsling, and Bobrovsky were all contracts the Panthers gave out that were fair market or higher. Rodrigues was given a raise to come to Florida, Verhaeghe was never given a real chance in Tampa and has been getting good pay days in Florida since coming over, Mikkola never shined as a high level defender but still got a raise from Florida before becoming the player he is today, same situation with Forsling, and Bobrovsky was given one of the largest goalie contracts of all time and is currently the highest paid active goalie in the NHL. Then there are the contributors who were acquired via trade like Reinhart, Jones, Marchand, Tkachuk, and Bennett. Reinhart and Bennett were players who were not playing anywhere near an elite level before arriving in Florida and then blossomed into truly elite talents post trade. Jones and Marchand were expensive trade deadline acquisitions that cost the team future picks and prospects in exchange for immediate help, which lots of teams try with the only difference being these ones actually worked. Then there is Tkachuk, which saw the Panthers trade one of their best forwards and defensemen for him where many people thought this trade was a win for Calgary and a loss for Florida. But then Tkachuk continued to grow into an elite player, and although Huberdeau and Weegar are both playing at high levels still, Tkachuk has evolved into one the games biggest winner. All of this is to say that when it comes to acquiring these players, no state income tax had nothing really to do with it. Any team can draft well, sign players who need a change of scenery to excel, and trade futures for immediate help. But because the Panthers have gotten better at it than other teams they deserve to basically be punished?
Another major point no one likes to talk about is that sometimes it's not just about the money, it's a combination of a lot of things including money, team success, media pressure, location, potential legacy, and all types of other things. Sure, Florida might have a slight advantage in money from a tax perspective, but they also have advantages coming from becoming a super successful team, being a team in a nice warm weather state where winters are actually enjoyable compared to places like Toronto or Chicago, having a relatively tame media that is not always attacking players (cough cough all the media in Toronto), and a newer team that allows players to more easily establish themselves as an all time great in that franchise’s history. You can not punish teams for all these advantages, as every team has their own advantages and disadvantages that create a unique playing field for free agents that helps lead to the unpredictability of free agency. By taking away even one advantage from a team, you could unknowingly be crippling them because of the advantages the rest of the league has that is not being taken into consideration, and now you’ve gone in the complete opposite way as planned for balancing.
So, what should the NHL do? The answer is really simple, not a damn thing. Just cause we are seeing a bit of dominance by Florida does not mean we need to instantly change rules to make these teams crippled. Past dynasties were built because owners were smart, GMs were strategic, and players were talented and lucky and a perfect blend came together to result in a lot of winning. If you want to do anything to balance the league, there should be a focus on teams abusing the LTIR to be able to have a playoff roster that is well above salary cap because of loopholes. We have seen teams do this a lot over the last 5-6 years and the NHL is clearly attempting to crack down on it with their past investigations and the new deal being worked on that will change the rule so that the lineup you play in the playoffs will also need to be cap compliant.
So unless Tampa and Florida win the next 5 cups too, maybe we hold on jumping all over some franchises that really have not had it that well in their history.
