OTHL Headquarters -- It is just a few days after the New Jersey Devils won the prestigious Stanley Cup and already the OTHL Commissioners are gearing up for the off-season. Today they have announced that a new, revised Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) has been signed and sealed for the upcoming 2005-2006 OTHL season. From an outside view the inaugral season went off quite smoothly however today at a press conference held by the Commissioners, Greg Byron was saying how things will only be getting smoother.
"Near the end of the season we all sat down and had some brain-storming sessions on how to correct certain issues and how to make things seamless. We feel there is room for some improvement regarding our rules and regulations and we are all confident this new revised CBA will do the trick."
One of the main topics of interest around the CBA were it's hard salary cap and the fact that several franchises were already dangerously close to the cap. The new CBA has left the hard cap system alone but introduces a salary rollback for all teams. This is by far the biggest alteration in the new CBA and is certain to ruffle some feathers along the way.
"Quite honestly I can say that the rollback is in the leagues best interest and it was inevitable. We plan on having the hard cap in place and with so many franchises close to the cap, they would have a great deal of difficulty even signing half of their RFA's. I must make it clear that this move is crucial for the league to survive in the long term, this is a one time only occurance to mend the league structure. This move is not being made to solely aid the higher spending teams, both high and low spending teams will benefit from this in different ways. The big spenders will be able to keep their RFA's and maybe have some room to add a UFA or two, the low budget teams will have an even greater amount of cap room and may be able to snag a big name UFA." stated Byron.
Among the other interesting rule changes is a rule that will only allow a goaltender to play in 72 games per regular season thus giving backup goalies something to look forward to. There has been a couple of small rules made regarding trading future considerations to prevent teams from "borrowing" players. The trade deadline has been pushed back. No player under 30 can receive a no-trade clause. Lastly there have been some changes to the salary cap penalties that will make it much more specific on what happens when a franchise goes over the cap.