I'm guessing most of you saw the situation going on with the Trashers today. If not, Trashers owner James Galante was one of 29 people indicted during a federal investigation into the trash industry. Part of the indictment details Galante allegedly paying three players $100,000 each last year and the entire team $750,000 in salary. The UHL salary cap is $275,000.
Players or their wives were sometimes allegedly paid as employees of Galante's other businesses.
This is what I've been talking about all year. I've heard of players receiving $3,000 per week, or getting a $2,500 signing bonus and $2,000 per week and things like that. Any idea now why some players might have considered signing there as opposed to other places? Think this might be why players who were released late in the season might not have wanted to report somewhere else? They had to take a massive pay cut.
This is why the UHL must adopt a hard cap for salaries. And then the owners need to give the commissioner's office the powers to enforce it.
Supposedly, the Trashers ARE going to play next year, as the team has been set up now under a different corporation. They are also going to pay one hellacious fine to the league which has been investigating them for several months.
And don't give me any crap about Richard Brosal. It took the Feds several years to crack this with hundreds of people. How's the UHL supposed to crack it with one or two people?
