Well as the lockout looms ahead I wanted to try and come up with a logical way of solving the differences that the NHLPA and the Owners have on the issues of Salary Cap, Player Salary and Revenue Sharing. My way of fixing the issues lies in that both sides will have to accept that they need to give, to get.

The players will have to concede that their current 57% share is to high to be sustained and that it needs to be reduced to come in line with other major sports, for arguments stake I will sit at a proposed 50/50 theoretical split. The owners will have to concede that all current signed contracts are legal documents with salaries committed to their players, so they will not rollback current salaries.

But then how do we handle the issue of the salary cap, where if we rollback the revenue sharing to 50/50, the cap drops and we are left with a large portion of the league above the salary cap? We roll back the cap hits but not the salaries. I know it sounds ridiculous but hear me out.

All current contracts have their salaries set in stone, they are owed to the players by the owners but we choose to rollback the overall team cap and individual player caps to a 50/50 revenue share. Then as the league grows year to year and the overall cap hit increases, individual player caps that have been rolled back are then increased year to year until they hit the equalizing point of their committed salary.

Here is an example for simplicities sake, not considering the actual rollback or growth projections.

For example lets take Ovechkin and assume the salary cap drops to 60.2 mil but rises 2mil for 6 years straight where last year's cap was 70.2mil.

Ovechkins Salary: Remains the same as on the contract

Ovechkins Current Cap: 9,538,462

Year 1 Cap: 8,179,706 = 9,538,462 * (60.2/70.2)

Year 2 Cap: 8,451,457 = 9,538,462 * (62.2/70.2)

Year 3 Cap: 8,723,208 = 9,538,462 * (64.2/70.2)

Year 4 Cap: 8,994,959 = 9,538,462 * (66.2/70.2)

Year 5 Cap: 9,266,710 = 9,538,462 * (68.2/70.2)

Year 6 Cap: 9,538,462 - Back to normal because the cap equalized.

Year 7 Cap: 9,538,462

So the league will sacrifice money owed in order to decrease the value of new contracts signed moving forward. The players get an inflated revenue share in the first years of the deal but as the league grows salaries will equalize and the owners will be where they want to be with a 50/50 split on revenue.