Pierre LeBrun

I think if you're going to find one overlapping theme in all this is that all the players in the league want to go to teams that win all the time or have a chance of winning all the time.

And yes, it happens to be a lot of them are also in no state income tax states and often warm weather.

But I'll say this.

I know today I was talking to an agent who said that he was surprised to hear from his client that his client wanted Montreal added to his list of places where he wanted to go play.

So Montreal now is changing their perception around the league because now they've had a deep run, they're young, they look like they have a good future.

So running a team the right way is still a very important part of this equation.

I don't think this is all about no one wants to play in Canada or no one wants to play in...

you know, certain markets in the U.S.

I still think running a good ship like Vegas does, like Florida does, like Dallas does, it's still the number one factor for me.

I mean, Mitch Marner doesn't pick Vegas if they're a 500 team.

And that is true.

And the reality is it's harder for the Winnipeg Jets to get guys, for the Ottawa Senators to get guys, for the Columbus Blue Jackets to get guys.

That's the reality.

I mean, the salary cap has gone a long way to even the playing field financially, but they're not going to even the playing field in terms of where people want to play and live.

I mean, that's still part of all this.

And here's the tough part.

is that now that the salary cap is escalating in a very dramatic way over the next few years, that is going to add to the have and have-nots too, because not every team is going to stay right at the cap.

We've had two-thirds of the league spending to the cap for the last seven, eight years.

That's going to diminish.

We're going to have a smaller group of teams now being comfortable going at that very high number in two, three years.