As the NHL off-season winds down and teams finalize their rosters for the upcoming season, a number of players have taken their teams to arbitration, where a third party will listen to arguements from the player and the club and he will deterime the value of the player for the upcoming season. Parties involved can present comparable players around the league and use that to argue their version of what they should be paid. Is this process fair? Take two recent examples of anticipated awards from arbitrators: [b]Daniel Briere[/b] - Made just under $2 million last season for the Buffalo Sabres, and was awarded a one year deal for [b]$5 million[/b] for nex season. Briere more than doubled his salary because one of his primary comparables was reported to be the $18 million, 3 year deal signed in Chicago by Martin Havlat. [b]Scott Gomez[/b] - His 2005-06 salary of $2.2 million will be almost tripled to reportedly just under [b]$6 million[/b] for next season. Again it was speculated that Havlat's contract was used as a comparable. Should the Sabres, who are among the smallest of the small market clubs, and the Devils, who have an abundance of high paid talent, be forced to pay a premium for these players just because one GM in one of the NHL's large markets paid more than market value for a sniper that they desparately needed to build their team around. Havlat will likely be the best player on a bad team in Chicago, and will probably be their top scorer and they will still miss the playoffs. Hindsight will show if the money he is paid is warranted or not. Gomez and Briere are good players on good teams, and they will be instrumental in leading their respective teams to the playoffs. That is, if they are still members of their respective teams. Both the Devils and the Sabres may be forced to deal some of their top players because they cannot afford to keep them. Or they will have the option to walk away from the arbitrator's rulings, but that would make the players unrestricted free agents, available to anyone who is willing to pay them. Either way, the teams are behind the 8-ball because they will be losing key components of thier clubs and not likely to get anywhere near market value in return. So the arbitration process seems to lean drastically in favor of the players, and teams are punished for building teams from within and drafting properly. They are punished for trying to be responsible and stay within a budget. Besides, with the salary cap at $44 million per team, and the way salaries are being awarded, (by teams and arbitrators), the players will undoubtably be forced to pay into the escrow account and will likely not earn what their contract states anyways.