If the NHL winds up with a full 82-game season and the 50-50 revenue split it finally proposed Tuesday, its third lockout will become a full triumph, because that’s the plan the league probably had from the beginning.
It just took a full month for the NHL to get where it was going all along, and like Social Security, the potential season-saving proposal would require future players to pay for Peace in Their Elders’ Time.
It has been a winning strategy for ratification of lockout-ending agreements in the past, in the respective forms of an entry-cap and the obvious coming of a salary-cap gap between stars and foot soldiers. The Players Association is expected to respond tomorrow in Toronto.
The plan Gary Bettman put forth yesterday in Toronto purports to protect current contracts, including the megadeals signed in anticipation of the lockout. It calls for a five-year limit on new contracts, with pay changes limited to 5 percent.
The union would have to accept a 12-percent cut in the players’ share of hockey revenue, from a 57-percent share to 50 percent, but current contracts would have that 12 percent deferred in escrow, to be paid back over time — depending on revenue growth.
As that payback commences, future contracts are likely to have to suffer to fit within the total share and under the salary cap.
That consideration is not likely to stop the players from running with Bettman’s proposed 50-50 split of hockey revenue in a six-year deal. It may take a week or two and a percentage point or two, but it appears likely the players will find reason to start the season, if not Nov. 2 as Bettman wants to fit in 82 games, shortly thereafter.
The proposal would shorten the entry system from three years to two, but more importantly, arbitration eligibility would move from four years to five, with unrestricted free agency from seven to eight years. Teams would be far less pressed to grant big deals to 24-year-olds.
“I would like to believe that it will be an excellent starting point and we can go forward and see if there is a deal to be made,” union head Donald Fehr said.
The players still are likely to object to that 12-percent pay cut during times of record revenue. Free agency would not kick in until age 28, with eight years of service, adding a year to each side of that situation. Salary arbitration would remain in place.
“We’ve given it our best shot,” Bettman said. “We had a number of significant elements that we believe can and should serve as the basis of a deal to get us playing hockey.
“We believe that this was a fair offer for a long-term deal, and it’s one that we hope gets a positive reaction so that we can drop the puck on Nov. 2 — which backing up, entails at least a one-week training camp,” Bettman said.
“So we have about nine or 10 days to get this all put to bed, signed, sealed and delivered, in order for this offer to be effective and for us to move forward.”
This 50-50 split is still a far cry from the current 57-43 players/owners ratio, but midway from the league’s initial demand to reverse the shares to a 43-57 players/owners split. It later proposed a players’ figure of 46 percent, and in its last offer before today, sought to cut the players’ share to 49 percent immediately, with that figure dwindling to 46 percent over six years. The union last asked for a pot increase from $1.87 billion to $2.1 billion over three years.
The NHL had long and loudly awaited a Players Association counter to its last offer, made Sept. 12 in response to a union revision of its proposal, delivered that same day. With no new union proposal forthcoming, the league made its bid Tuesday.
Each side’s two lead negotiators, Bettman and deputy Bill Daly from the NHL, and Donald and Steve Fehr from the Players Association, met at union headquarters yesterday, the first day of the second month of the lockout.
Yesterday’s session was the first since the sides recessed without progress in Manhattan last week. Until the league proposal, there had not been any new offers on the main issue of the players’ share of hockey revenue since Sept. 12, when the union adjusted its fixed increase plan, from the current $1.87 billion to $2.1 billion, and the league countered with its players’ share cut from 57 percent, sliding from 49 to 46 percent.