IF Gary Bettman is to be believed that the NHL will never negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that does not contain a hard cap in the form of a fixed-percentage link between revenues and payrolls, then it is appropriate to cast the commissioner as George Armstrong Custer, the general who jauntily led his troops to annihilation.
Because by establishing a rigid objective that the league cannot attain through collective bargaining and knows it cannot attain through collective bargaining, Bettman, his league officers and the Board Governors have placed the NHL on the eve of destruction. There is no other conclusion to be drawn. There is no other end-game in sight. If the NHL is not willing to compromise and enter into negotiations with the union on a meaningful luxury-tax-based system that would (and should) include significant changes to salary arbitration, qualifying offers and buyouts, the league will cease to exist in any recognizable form for any foreseeable future.
Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting at which the lockout will be rubber-stamped has essentially been scheduled for months. Slap Slots has learned that the PA on Friday received notification from the British Columbia Labor Board of the league’s intent to lock out the players on Sept. 16. We’re told that correspondence between the league and the provincial labor board commenced at least as early as Aug. 11. This has been the plan for over a month, this has been the plan for over a year, this has been the plan since June of 2000, when a Board resolution was unanimously adopted “directing [Bettman] to seek cost certainty.”
Mark my words. In holding fast to its demand for percentage-of-the-gross, the NHL is on a path to canceling the season and then declaring a labor impasse next spring so that it can gain legal clearance to unilaterally implement its $31M hard-cap system in time for a 2005 Entry Draft and 2005-06 season. If the league is permitted to do so by the courts, the players will then immediately go out on strike. And then what? Does the league actually believe it can field teams of replacement players, that it can sell teams of strike-breakers to the public? Does the league think players of repute will cross the union line?
Don’t the people running the show have any clue about what makes up a hockey locker room? Don’t they understand the trust and sacrifice among teammates that comprise the essential fabric of a hockey team? Do they honestly expect players to join a replacement league when sooner or later (after two or three years, after all, any union can be broken) these strike-breakers would have to share a room with union members – and go into the corners against them?
Does the league honestly expect recent and prospective draft choices such as Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin and Al Montoya to sign contracts in order to begin their careers as part of a replacement league? Would the league place young, currently signed prospects’ futures in jeopardy by ordering them to join a replacement league? Don’t they understand that Europeans will return home to play, never to return?
Have they all gone crazy in the NHL Boardroom? Are they so consumed with fear and loathing that they’re blind to the conflagration that will be caused by impasse and implementation?
The league talks about wanting a partnership with the players, but they sure didn’t want a partnership when it came to conducting an audit of its 30 teams. They talk about an honest flow of information, yet they hide behind confidentiality agreements the way a dishonest President of the U.S. hides behind executive privilege.
The NHL and union had a confidentiality agreement prohibiting either side from disclosing that they were meeting throughout 2002-03, yet Bettman continually hammered the PA all that season for refusing to meet. Now the NHL claims to have lost $224 million last year but cites confidentiality agreements in blocking disclosure of individual franchise finances.
The league demands that it be trusted. But where has it earned that trust? Under this administration, the sport that was at its zenith in 1994 following the Rangers’ Stanley Cup victory and was poised to overtake basketball in popularity in the States is now at an all-time nadir, aesthetically and economically. It’s less popular on TV than poker. Where have they earned the right to dictate the future?
The NHL has collected $10M apiece from its 30 teams for a $300M lockout fund. It has, we’re told, earned another $24M in interest on that money. And yet, the NHL has authorized layoffs and outright dismissals of hundreds of employees in the league and team offices. They have $324M at their disposal, but won’t invest one cent of it so that the $40,000-a-year working stiffs can keep their jobs and pay their bills.
They’re princes, all right. Princes and magicians whose next act will be to make the game disappear. Forever.