Last week, FiveThirtyEight published an interesting article on the strong relationship between spending and winning in Major League Baseball. Although baseball is where we got Moneyball from, most smaller-budget teams still can't consistently compete with top-half teams, Tampa Bay and Oakland aside. Spending still rules.
Prior to the 2004 lockout the NHL was also uncapped, but the introduction of the salary cap and floor changed the landscape. Non-player spending still mattered, but cap teams could no longer outspend each other on player cap hits—they had to simply be more efficient than the others.
At least, that's how it was supposed to work.