What's Affordable in Today's NHL? Depends on the Player.

No matter how carefully a big-league team controls its payroll, the world-class athletes will get their money. The St. Louis Blues recognize that fact, which is why Chris Pronger signed a one-year, $10 million contract on Friday. Pronger will play for the same money he made last year - $9.5 million - with a $500,000 signing bonus tacked on.

NHL teams have spent much of this summer dumping players and cutting salaries in anticipation of a new collective bargaining agreement, one they hope will keep a tight rein on multimillion dollar contracts. The Blues have let several key players walk away as free agents, including forward Pavol Demitra, who made $6.5 million last season.

Along with reflecting the league-wide trend, the St. Louis austerity plan is a backlash against the team's dismal results. The last few years will be remembered as the Money-For-Nothing era in St. Louis, a time when expensive free agents and trades for high-priced veterans produced steadily diminishing returns.

So with all the speculation about an NHL salary cap, one that might be pegged at $30-$40 million per team, why pay one man $10 million? Blues' GM Larry Pleau might respond with another question: When can they hope to find another defenseman of similar calibre? When healthy, Chris Pronger is arguably the best in the game. Such prizes come around a couple of times in a decade, and 30 teams are after them.

As the NBA and NFL have shown, a league with a salary cap will always have plenty of money for a few players at the top of the pay scale, and plenty of opportunity for entry-level players at the bottom. It's the guys in the middle who end up getting squeezed.

Just how hard that squeeze is, and how much a top-end talent like Pronger is worth on a new pay scale, won't be known until the new collective agreement is in place.

Not everyone agrees that the Blues should have forked over the cash to keep their best player in the fold. Jeff Gordon at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Pronger should have been traded.