The thing the league not only has a scholarship program in place (1 year of schooling for each year in the league) which is a pretty good deal because a lot of these players are not going to be playing pro hockey. They also pay for all their meals, housing, travel home at the holidays, equipment, and much more. I know a family whose kid plays for Red Deer and they said they they saved about 10-15 thousand bucks having his kid make the WHL compared to AAA hockey.
I just think that just looking at the WHL for example if you have teams being forced to pay bigger salaries you are going to cripple a lot of small market teams (Lethbridge, Prince Albert, Prince George, Swift Current, Brandon,).
This is not good for the league as a whole.