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No, the fascinating thing about a draft-less NHL would be how much it would force team management to reconsider player values. Someone in his early 20s today is highly valuable to a team precisely because his contract is within CBA-defined affordable limits. But what if those limits didn’t exist? Tampa Bay has had seven years of Steven Stamkos at below market value because their 2007-08 mediocrity was rewarded with a 2008 first overall draft pick and the cap-friendly contract that the CBA dictates for a player’s early years. Would some other team have offered to pay him superstar money with his first contract as an 18-year-old? The more relevant question today is for Connor McDavid: As of Friday, Edmonton gets him for seven years on the cheap. But how many teams would offer him, today, the eight-year, $84-million contract that the Chicago Blackhawks gave to each of Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane last summer? (The answer, one suspects: a lot.)

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Few prospects are as sure a bet as Stamkos and McDavid, though. How many teams would be willing to commit even a few million dollars annually to players not yet out of junior or the NCAA? Such a system would put tremendous scrutiny on scouting and player-development operations, since major investments in young talent would have obvious, dire consequences if a team made a big bet on the wrong young guy. You could see a scenario where teams all sign teenagers to long-term deals in the early days of a no-draft NHL, and after several franchises are burned by players who don’t pan out, a recalibration takes place where youth, and the uncertainty it brings, becomes too risky for a major commitment, except in McDavid-like circumstances.

How much cap space could a team realistically hope to devote to players not ready for an NHL roster? Would it be possible to have great NHL talent and soon-to-be-ready talent stashed in the minors, or would a team have to pick one or the other? Good questions. Ultimately, the system would reward teams that evaluate talent well, and punish those that do not.

That sounds fair.

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