The NHL does not have a player cost problem. The NHL has a small-market revenue problem, one its initial parody of a collective bargaining proposal to the NHLPA doesn’t begin to address.
On Tuesday, the NHLPA will present a proposal to the league that does address this core economic issue. The document is expected to represent a far-sighted vision for the NHL rather than the myopic approach in favor on Sixth Avenue, where it seems like 2004 all over again.
“Our fundamental proposal, our initial proposal, relates to the fact that we need to pay out less in player costs,” Gary Bettman said on Thursday in reaffirming the league’s intention to shut down the league on Sept. 15 if the players don’t agree to massive givebacks.
Eight years ago, the NHL mounted a massive public relations campaign to justify its reach into the players’ pockets, much of the appeal to the fans resting on a pledge that a hard cap would result in lower ticket prices.
There’s no such attempt this time around. The league isn’t even attempting to justify its position of demanding massive givebacks from the players in order to be allowed to play without interruption.
Everyone — and that includes Bettman, deputy commissioner Bill Daly, chief of staff Bob Batterman and the Board of Governors — knows the disparity of revenue between the powerhouse markets and the ne’er-do-wells is the critical issue confronting the NHL, but the powers that be either don’t have the imagination or foresight or the stomach or political capital to attend to it.
Thus, it is left to the players themselves, left to the union led by Don Fehr to propose meaningful changes to the landscape that truly will benefit franchises like the Islanders, Panthers and Blues, even if at some expense to Jeremy Jacobs’ Bruins and Ed Snider’s Flyers and Rogers’ and Bell Canada’s Maple Leafs.
* Imagine if the NHLPA had come to the NHL a month ago and said the players would go on strike unless all existing contracts immediately were increased by 24 percent. Imagine if Zach Parise had used his union to indirectly tell Wild owner Craig Leipold the $98 million sounded good at the time he signed as a free agent, but the winger would now require the deal be bumped to $121.52 million before he would put on a Minnesota uniform.
Imagine the outrage in all quarters if players were using this round of collective bargaining as a mechanism to engage in a mass breach of promise with the owners. No one would be pretending the responsibility lay on both sides if the NHLPA acted so unethically in the guise of labor negotiations.
Yet when the owners want to unilaterally renege on contracts into which they entered into willingly and without threat or duress, somehow this is regarded as a sound negotiating tactic. This may be a legal tactic under labor law, but it is reflective of bad faith and illustrative of the NHL’s disregard for its own word and for its owners’ own signatures.
The word “rollback” has not been used, that’s true, but that only is because the union never responded to the NHL’s initial offer, never gave it credibility by asking Bettman or the league negotiating committee how it would intend to accommodate existing contracts in a world in which the players’ share and cap immediately would be reduced by 24 percent.
There was pain in 2004-05 when the players agreed to a 24-percent rollback, no doubt, but that wouldn’t compare to the blood-letting that such a rollback would create this time. There were no 10-, 12-, or 15-year deals then. There were no $85 million or $110 million contracts then.
By my inexact calculation, approximately $5.27 billion is owed players under current contracts. Does anyone for a moment believe the union would agree to what would be a giveback of more than $1.26 billion going forward?
Is Bettman prepared to tell Sidney Crosby he can’t play unless he surrenders $25.856 million of the $111.9 million he has coming to him? Shea Weber has $97 million coming to him; Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Parise and Ryan Suter all have $88 million coming. Does anyone in his right mind believe they’re going to give back nearly a quarter of what they have been promised?
There is good faith and there is legalized extortion. There are problem-solvers and there are shell-game operators. There is collective bargaining, and there is the NHL on the verge of another owners’ lockout.