The impending NHL lockout isn’t as much about spreadsheets and definitions of revenue as it is about honor — as in the 30 NHL owners’ refusal to honor the existing contracts into which they have entered with their respective players.
Because even as Gary Bettman’s league and Donald Fehr’s union attempt to hash out the considerable differences between the sides eight years after the Board of Governors won the most smashing victory in the history of pro sports negotiations through the 2004-05 lockout, the owners’ attempts to welch on their collective word provides the underlying theme to these talks.
There were relatively few long-term contracts in place when the owners extracted a 24-percent rollback the last time around. Now, with long-term deals an industry standard, the owners are attempting a massive take-back via escrow deductions that would begin at 15-to-20 percent this year and likely would remain in double digits over at least the following two seasons.
These owners don’t simply want the players to get smaller pieces of the pie they might order in the future, these owners and this league intend to cut into the pieces of the pie that already have been delivered to the players’ table.
We’re talking about contracts that have been signed by both parties, ostensibly at good faith, that amount to approximately $1.65 billion yet outstanding for 2012-13, $1.34 billion for 2013-14 and $835 million for 2014-15, not including potential entry level bonuses.
Who are these guys who sign contracts then use the guise of collective bargaining to rewrite them? What gives corporate barons like Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs, Philadelphia’s Ed Snider and Carolina’s Peter Karmanos Jr. the audacity to use the end of a labor agreement to conduct what is presumably a legal mass breach of promise?
The commissioner and his allies consistently refer to last year’s NFL and NBA lockouts, through which the owners in those respective leagues were able to get the players to agree to a smaller percentage take of revenue going forward.
Yet not a single player in either league lost money on an existing contract as a result of those settlements. According to information provided by the NFL Players Association, the average salary increased from $2 million to $2.25 million in the first season of the new agreement.
It is true that escrow has been part of the system under which the NHL and the players have operated the last seven years, as deputy commissioner Bill Daly mentioned the other day.
But the fact is the players received at least 97.51 percent of their contracts’ full value in five of those seven seasons, with the average escrow loss over their seven years amounting to 3.2 percent.
If the league were to offer to cap escrow on all existing contracts at 3.2 percent, the discussion immediately would be transformed into a serious negotiation on all other issues. An immediate offer to cap escrow at, say, 5 percent on all existing contracts would all but ensure a settlement within weeks that would allow the season to open as scheduled.
But no. The league not only hasn’t made that sort of an offer, its people have repeatedly indicated the NHL’s requirement of immediate and dramatic take-backs from the players, or else.
Or else they won’t allow the league to open for business. They’re quite something, these corporate entities lined up on the NHL’s side of the table, a group absent the intention of honoring their collective word.