Why didn't the NHL do something about spiralling salaries before?

Answer: Significant salary escalation was inevitable at some point, because NHL players were largely underpaid up until the 1990s.

But the last collective agreement, reached in 1995, included several tools to limit salaries, such as a rookie salary cap and tight restrictions on free agency.

The free agency system left most NHL players tied to one team from the day they are drafted until the age of 31. Only at that age did they become "unrestricted" and free to take the highest offer. Players in their mid and late-twenties qualified only for "restricted" free agency, giving their current teams the right to match any contract offer from elsewhere. The rookie cap limited how much a player could earn in his first three years.

Combining these tools, team owners expected to limit a player's earnings through his best years, thereby preventing runaway salary escalation.

Instead, teams gave in to their competitive instincts and reckless impulses:

• The rookie salary cap was gutted when teams took advantage of a loophole, adding lucrative "bonus" payments on top of the "maximum" base salary.

  It began in 1997, when the Boston Bruins gave two rookies, Joe Thornton and Sergei Samsonov, the maximum salary allowed under the rookie cap. But those contracts also had bonus clauses that would roughly triple the base salary if certain criteria - such as statistical benchmarks - were met. From then on, all high draft picks began demanding and receiving similar contracts.

• The multimillion dollar offers made to a few free agents served to "raise the bar," leading to comparable salary increases for comparable players. This movement was led by a few wealthy teams, like the Rangers, Flyers and Red Wings. But it drove up the market value for players throughout the league.

• Teams did not use their leverage with restricted free agents. At contract time, most under-31 players have two options: sign and play or stay home and earn nothing. Despite holding this obvious bargaining advantage, teams often gave in to salary demands, offering players huge raises and long-term contracts.

  For example, in 1997 Joe Sakic of the Colorado Avalanche signed a three-year, $21-million US "offer sheet" with the New York Rangers. But Colorado exercised its right to match the offer and retained him. Sakic went nowhere, and the only result of the Rangers' gambit was to more than double his salary.

  In the same year, Paul Kariya of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks sat out the beginning of the season, looking for a big raise. As a 23-year-old, that was the only leverage he had. The Ducks caved, giving him a two-year, $14 million deal. Other huge contracts for top forwards soon followed.

• More damaging still is the fact that many of the hefty contracts went to mediocre players. In 1999, the Rangers signed Valeri Kamensky to a four-year deal worth $13.45 million. He scored 14 goals the previous season. A year later, St. Louis gave Dallas Drake $9 million over four years. He averaged 14 goals per season over the life of the contract.

  These deals helped "raise the bar," boosting the market value of players with similar stats and abilities.

Much of this free spending was funded by expansion money as the NHL added teams throughout the 1990s (hefty expansion fees were divided among incumbent teams). There was also the expectation that the game's popularity would grow in new markets and television revenues would soar as a result.

Now the expansion money is gone, and the hockey boom didn't happen. The league's latest American television contract pays no money up front for broadcast rights. Many teams, especially the newer ones, have also seen a decline in ticket sales.