Former Flyers captain explains why your favorite NHL players don't make as much money as you think

"Here is who they pay: Right off the bat escrow gets taken out of every check. On average about 10%. Most people have no idea about escrow.


Escrow by the way is the money the NHL holds as a sort of down payment in case the 50% revenue share between the players and owners isn't met. Pronger says that in most cases, this 10% is never seen again reducing the earnings to 500,400,000."

"Next comes federal taxes which account for 37%, based off salary of course and then state tax. This can be a small as 0% in Texas or Florida or as high as 16% in New York. Pronger uses 8% as an example here. This takes another 4,432,000 off the earnings.

Next, agents take 3%, totalling player X's earnings to 2,806,000.

Player X is now netting $2,806,000. That is a lot of money! But now they have to spend a little more money to do their job effectively."

"Now this is all the expenses just to be doing their job at a high level and not living the high life. Which certainly happens but not on this thread. Just a reminder these are averages and not fact!"