Smart teams should benefit in salary cap world

Mark Thompson, Dekalb, Ill.

Being a Hawks fan, all you hear is complaints about the salary cap.

But the cap is needed.

One thing that should be changed is teams should benefit from drafting well. If a player who the team drafted makes more than $2 million, only 75 percent of that should count against the salary cap.

So for the Hawks, if Jonathan Toews and Brian Campbell were making $6 million each, it would cost the full $6 million for Campbell, but only $4.5 million for Toews.

Also, if a player wins an award and earns a bonus, that bonus shouldn’t count against the cap.