Playoff Adjustment

There are 1230 regular season games and about 88 playoff games (give or take a couple) each year.  Since the salary cap is directly tied to the total revenue of the NHL, it is important to remember that the pool of compensation dollars is a fixed pie of ~57% of the total revenue (depending on how many teams spend to the cap). Since playoff revenue is disproportionately higher than the 7.2% of number of games it represents, for simplicity sake we assume that Playoff-related Revenue generates ~10% of total league revenues. As a result, if a team/player makes the playoff we will also show an adjusted salary related to their playoff performance (if any).  It makes sense for consistently  deep playoff performers like the Detroit Red Wings to be making 20-30% more than their calculated REGULAR SEASON numbers, but that means that extra amount should be taken out of someone else’s compensation who is not playing or performing in the PLAYOFFS.  So if a player does not make the playoffs, their VALUE is adjusted downward by about 10%.