If the NHL comes to the table today representing its plan to assume some portion of the “make-whole” on players’ existing contracts as a concession rather than an obligation, then the owners’ lockout is doomed to continue and as likely as not to doom the 2012-13 season in its entirety.
The spirit in which the league’s ambiguous plan regarding this essential element of any agreement is presented will be almost as important as the relevant arithmetic.
Paying full value on a contract is a responsibility, not a quid-pro-quo item to be used to hold the players and the season hostage.
If the NHL’s willingness to pay 100 cents on the dollar — or the historical norm as relates to escrow — is dependent upon the NHLPA yielding on essential systemic issues, then the renewed hope of conciliation generated by Saturday’s sit-down between league second Bill Daly and union second Steve Fehr will prove illusory.
There is no time for bait and switch. There is no more time for posturing. The players have yielded and are yielding in a negotiation that has been all about givebacks all of the time. The players will go to 50/50 even though the NHL never quite has presented a justification for the drop-down — beyond the famous fallback for parents, teachers, coaches and persons of authority: “Because I said so!”
There is a window here on Sixth Avenue as the parties convene for the first time since Canceler-in-Chief Gary Bettman huffed out of an Oct. 18 meeting in Toronto after no more than 10 minutes. It is a window in which a principled resolution to make-whole should serve as the foundation of peace with honor.
Is this now or never? Maybe not, but it’s difficult to envision a settlement if talks this week collapse, and it is impossible to envision a settlement if talks collapse because of an absence of trust between the parties. No one requires another couple of pages flipping off the 2012 calendar. Everyone understands what is at stake.
There is work to be done beyond make-whole. Given that there will not be a full season, the parties will have to agree on a cap number for 2013-14. The NBA cap for this full season is the same as it was last year for its 66-game lockout-truncated season. There is the precedent for the NHL and Basketball Bettman.
Several individuals have told us the league will be willing to negotiate off its proposed five-year contract term limit and 5-percent variance on annual salary, though the NHL does seem committed to increasing unrestricted free agency requirements by a year in experience and/or age, to eight years and/or 28, and likely will dig in on its proposed Entry Level changes.
The AHL provision and the punitive retroactive punishment regarding front-loaded long-term contracts previously registered by the league are as much team issues as NHLPA issues, both restrictions aimed at the heart of successful big-market teams and aimed at the offices of general managers who from time to time make mistakes.
But surely differences in those areas can be bridged. Surely not even Bettman would be willing to cancel a season so he can punish the Rangers for signing Wade Redden and punish the Devils into perpetuity for Ilya Kovalchuk.
This is the time. This is the place. A season is on the brink. If the league’s make-whole isn’t half, well, you know, there is no reason for this lockout to continue.
But if the offer is, ah, disingenuous, then peace with honor will be out of reach and the parties might as well return to a winter of arguing over the shape of the table.