TAXES ON ICE: Winning the Stanley Cup Is More Taxing Than Ever.

In theory, taxes should affect all North American professional sports equally. But that’s not the case with hockey, which has different salary cap rules and geographic dynamics than the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.

Unlike baseball and basketball, where teams are allowed to exceed the salary cap so long as they agree to pay a luxury tax that gets redistributed across the entire league, pro football and hockey have a hard cap. But unlike the NFL, where all 32 teams are subject to the U.S. federal tax code, nearly a quarter of NHL teams operate in Canada, where provincial tax rates can be significantly higher.

All of which means that income taxes are now playing a bigger role on the ice.

Since 2020, as the league’s salary cap has increased just 2.4%, the teams making deep playoff runs have tended to be from states with lower tax rates. Of the 20 teams that made it to the conference finals or an equivalent round, 11 hailed from Florida, Texas or Nevada—all states without personal income tax.

Seven of those teams advanced to the Stanley Cup Final, including the Florida Panthers, who defeated the New York Rangers for their second straight Eastern Conference title on Saturday night.

Plus: “But even NHL players acknowledge that tax discrepancies have become a significant factor in choosing where to play. ‘I’d be lying if I said it didn’t, right? I feel like everybody takes it into consideration,’ said Florida center Nick Cousins, who has played for six different teams. ‘It’s almost not fair, to be honest.'”

Incentives matter.