NHL

NHL’s tactics publicity ploy

Up Until now, at least, every single NHL proposal throughout Sixth Avenue’s collective bargaining disaster initially has been portrayed as more conciliatory and less onerous than a more comprehensive analysis would soon reveal.

Which is to say the tidbit the league dropped Friday night — a few hours after cancellation of the Winter Classic, not coincidentally — about being open to discussing the “make whole” contract concept should and must be regarded with healthy skepticism.

When the league was taking on water after its relationship with spin-master Frank Luntz was exposed, it suddenly produced and publicized its “50-50” proposal, that upon further review was no such thing.

After the league canceled its signature New Year’s celebration, it suddenly dropped word of its willingness to seek compromise.

If only Canceler-in-Chief Gary Bettman were as good at closing a deal as he is at momentarily changing the public conversation.

Throughout the owners’ lockout, which has reached 50 days and has claimed approximately one-quarter of the 2012-13 schedule, it is owners’ commissioner Bettman who has galvanized and unified the players far more than PA executive director Don Fehr, who has replaced Bob Goodenow as the straw man in this standoff.

By the way, you know what’s hilarious? The notion the players deserve blame for this, for having had the audacity to hire someone who would diligently represent their interests — that’s what’s hilarious.

Changing the public conversation may buy the league some temporary cover, but the effort becomes counter-productive the moment the players recognize they have been deceived.

That’s when the cycle begins anew. Frustration begets resolve. The finish line becomes more distant.

The Canceler-in-Chief likes to refer to the NBA, NFL and the landscape. So he’s suggesting if the splits in those two leagues were 55-45 for the players, that’s what the NHL would accept?

The next time Bettman makes reference to basketball, perhaps the players should make reference to the $930 million a year the NBA gets from its television partners as opposed to the $355 million per the NHL currently pulls in from NBC and the Canadian networks.

“Make-whole” is entirely about escrow. Even when — and if — the sides agree on a formula under which the players will get full value of their current deals, there is much to negotiate regarding contract and freedom issues. But “make-whole” will come first.

I would suggest a large part of the solution would be to decrease escrow — and thus the amount necessary to fund make-whole — by altering the way the floor is calculated.

Percentage-of-the-gross is a guaranteed shortcut to a dead-end in a league where 90 percent of the money is generated locally and in which the payroll of smaller market teams is dictated by the dramatic annual increase revenue of a handful of monster franchises.

But this is the system to which Bettman, for better or worse and in sickness and health, is married, largely because he is not creative enough to invest in a more nuanced approach. It is, to coin a phrase, non-negotiable.

In 2006-07, the second year of the system but the first season for which the numbers were established by actual revenue and not an estimate, the $28 million floor was 63.6 percent of the $44 million cap. No one complained about that.

But as the cap increased, not only did the floor increase to perhaps unrealistic levels, the percentage increased as well, to the point that last year’s $48.3 million floor was 75.1 percent of the $64.3 million floor.

If the cap reaches $88 million — and it will at 50-50 before all that long if revenues continue to increase at historical rates—then the $72 million floor will represent 81.8 percent of the ceiling.

Forcing teams to hit the floor increases escrow and complicates make-whole. The answer is to set the floor at a percentage rate of the cap — say, 65 percent rather than the $16 million hard number — which would thus minimize escrow and diminish the make-whole gap to a workable number.

There’s this, too: Cap the players at 51 percent of hockey-related revenue but guarantee the players 49 percent. Combined with a lower floor, this diminishes the chance the league would ever have to issue make-whole checks to the union following any season.

Despite all the shenanigans, the parties aren’t all that far away from a deal on the revenue split. But an agreement will be reached only if both parties are committed to negotiation rather than deception, and only if the league is willing to declare the victory it has already won.