The NHL is an example of failed laissez-faire economics.
On the one hand, rich teams offer big contracts to average players, pushing not-so-well-endowed teams to go down the same route and to jeopardize their solvency (David Clarksonand Ryane Clowe are good examples). On the other hand, players year after year take advantage of the relative scarcity of free agents to bust the bank and get lucrative contracts often way above their market value (not to mention whatever the real value of their work could be). Laissez-faire in the NHL is thus synonymous with dysfunction. The League’s economic system is not founded upon reasoned agreement between rational agents, but rather on never-ending overbidding. This is a game at which only recurring labour disputes can allow the League to survive.