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Getting CWHL Players Paid - Update
According to this article, the CWHL is working on making customizable jerseys available for sale, with a percentage of the profits going to the player whose jersey is sold. Right now, the CWHL does sell team jerseys, but they don't have players names on them. This system will put the CWHL on the same page as the NHL and NWHL, who already have this system in place.
At the bottom of the article, it states that the league is still on track to pay CWHL players for the 2017-18 season. The salary structure will have each player get paid a flat-rate, meaning each player will be paid the same salary.
Thoughts?




Yay for player jerseys and more importantly salaries! I really don't know what to think about flat-rate salaries, though. Wouldn't that make it easier to stack one team with the best players?
I'm assuming the salary won't be a fully livable salary, so players will still get to chose which team they stay on, since they have jobs and other financial ties keeping them in their cities. Traditionally, trades have only taken place with the players consent, especially when trading players between Canadian teams and Boston.
My thoughts about the flat-rate salary is that I think it's a bit unfair to the veteran players. There are some players who have been with the league for nearly 10 years. The fact that they'll get paid the same salary as rookies is a bit...disrespectful to me.
I think a large part if the reason why salaries will be equal is because of the business model of the cwhl. All teams get the same funding from the league. Any profits from tickets, merch, etc, gets divided evenly among the teams no matter which teams makes the most/least money. Since this is the model the cwhl has, it makes sense that player wages also equal, since each team is getting the same amount of money from the league.
The NWHL also gives each team the same amount of money and it's up to the team to divide it up. Whether the league wants each player paid the same or different amounts has nothing to do with the amount of money the team has - it's just a matter of how the money is divided. I understand that the CWHL want to reward all the players equally when they start giving salaries, but hopefully they'll eventually pay players based on their experience and their performance, like the NWHL does.
Well, in that case, to quote Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove, "well, ya got me. By all accounts, it doesn't make sense."
Keeper (see the comments below) brought up an interesting point about the veterans: Imagine how the veterans who just retired (or will retire at the end of this season) will feel if the veterans who stick around get a much larger salary than the rookies next season. Maybe paying everybody the same amount is keeping things fair until enough time has passed that players can be paid different amounts based on their experience and performance? I honestly don't know - there are pros and cons to the system.
Agreed with you Icing. It won't be a livable wage, just like that of the Ndub. They will continue to have choice about wghere they get to ply their skills and this will be a hobby for most that ends when the need for a real career. The bonus money on the sweaters is a good thing. It's too bad it couldn't be retro-active because I have 3 Knoxie sweaters and a Kirk. I collect jerseys so there will be others who benefit. But I think we are still quite a number of years before the players make an above average living wage. You must remember that the NHL players were not paid a more than living wage until the 60s which was 43 years after the founding of the league. You must remember that even the stars of the league had jobs outside of hockey. Maurice Richard was a machinist,Tim Horton drove a gravel truck for Conn Smyth and Bobby Hull worked on his parent's farm. I believe that women's hockey will grow. It just takes time. I do think however it will take less time for women. I agree with the idea of paying the pioneering veterans a bit more. They deserve it. But there are only a few who would merit that. They mostly pay for Montreal as there are very few others that have been around that long. (Kessler, and possibly Moulson, possibly Dostaller for Calgary other than that there are very few originals left.).
You pointed out something interesting - paying the veteran players more would be like a slap in the face to the veterans who recently retired. I guess paying each player the same amount at the start will even things out, and as time goes on, they can start adjusting salaries based on experience and performance.
That's really interesting about Hull, Horton and Richard! I knew that when hockey leagues started appearing (early 1900s), athletes were never paid and it was a big scandal when certain teams started paying some players to entice them to switch teams. Even with that, it was an unspoken agreement that the salaries would be quite low, so when the American teams started offering much higher salaries to bring Canadian players down, it was a big "eyebrow-raising" thing.
I think we're so accustomed to athletes being paid outrageous amounts of money these days that we refuse to accept anything below a living wage, but like you pointed out - playing sports wasn't considered a career until quite recently. I guess once teams started paying athletes outrageous amounts of money to get them to switch teams, that opened the floodgates to the system we have today.