If there's one thing the NHL league office is obsessed with, it's competitive balance. Parity rules in hockey, and the league often emphasizes that it treats its 32 teams equally. That's fostered by a hard salary cap. There's a fixed amount teams can spend on players — and as the league recovers from revenues lost in the pandemic, that salary cap remains largely stagnant, jumping to $82.5 million this season after three straight seasons of $81.5 million.
However there's an unspoken secret in the NHL: There's no salary cap on hockey operations. And behind the scenes, there's an arms race between teams, navigating where to spend extra cash — and how much of it needs to be spent — to find a competitive advantage.
"Nobody will say it out loud," one NHL assistant general manager said. "But the divide between the haves and the have nots in the league is quite big. Not everyone is playing with the same deck of cards. If you think teams like Arizona, Carolina or Ottawa are operating on a budget that looks like what Toronto is spending, then you're fooling yourself."
What does that gap look like? Two dozen front office executives, coaches, agents, players and people closest to the game shared their insights to offer a picture of what type of spending goes on behind the scenes. They help explain where money is spent (and saved). Staff size is the easiest place to start.
NHL teams are not required to register hires with the league — and it's not something the league tracks, nor has guidelines for. There's not even a rule for how many coaches a team can employ. The Colorado Avalanche just won the Stanley Cup with the smallest coaching staff in the league; Jared Bednar has two assistants plus a goaltending coach, video coach and skills coach.
The Philadelphia Flyers' new hire, John Tortorella, is tied for having the largest coaching staff (eight). Some teams are figuring out how to surround their players with even more resources. The Flyers are one of four teams in the league to have their skills coach travel on the road, along with the Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers.
But when it comes to the number of people employed in hockey ops, everyone surveyed for this story pointed to one team spending far more than the rest: the Maple Leafs.
"If the salary cap was $140 million, Toronto would have a $140 million payroll," one agent said. "They are the Yankees or the Dodgers of our league. [GM] Kyle [Dubas] seemingly gets a blank check from ownership." Toronto players sometimes joke that they could spend each day introducing themself to a different team staffer. Rival front office members joke that Dubas has more assistant general managers than they have ties; the Leafs technically have five AGMs, plus eight people in hockey ops with a director title.
On the low end of the spectrum is Carolina, which has the leanest front office in the league. GM Don Waddell has a small circle around him, and they are all tasked with doing multiple jobs. Waddell also holds the title of team president. Multitasking runs throughout the organization; in the playoffs, public relations manager Mike Brown was assisting on video goal reviews.