When Alex Burrows was fined $2,500 for his comments about the poor officiating (suffice to say the story is far larger than that, but I don’t want to get into it), some people seemed to think it excessive.  In particular, the talking heads on CBC decided that he should’ve been fined far less, to the tune of $1,000 total.

Let’s put that in perspective.

According to NHL Numbers, Burrows is scheduled to make $2,000,000 this season.  Let’s forget about things like escrow and taxes, and just estimate that he takes home half of that.  So we’ll work with a nice, round figure of $1,000,000.

Doing the math, and operating with the $1,000,000 assumption, a $2,500 fine represents 0.25% of Burrows take-home money.  That’s one-quarter of one-percent. 

Let’s assume the average Canadian has a take-home pay around $40,000.  A 0.25% fine on that salary is $100.  That’s it?  I’ve spent more than that on bad nights out.

If the NHL wants to actually have it’s fines make an impact, they truly need to up the ante.