In pro sports, it is apparently more of a calamity for a game to be decided on the final play on a bogus call by scab officials, as the Seahawks-Packers NFL game was last Monday, than it is for games — if not an entire season — not to be played at all, as is the scenario confronting the NHL.
It is the No Hockey League, all right, the one that locks its doors not as a last resort but as a matter of course upon the expiration of labor agreements, the one whose Board has recorded a natural hat trick over the span of 18 years.
Let’s stipulate that the players represent the lone party to have offered concessions in what only laughingly and loosely can be defined as collective bargaining negotiations. An offer such as the league’s — which simply reduces the rate of a prior proposed salary cut — is not a concession.
Regardless, the responsibility does fall on the NHLPA to attempt to advance the stalled process, and that entails submitting a revised proposal to the league that will place owners’ commissioner Gary Bettman on the defensive when and if he refuses to consider it.
And that means the union is going to have to submit a long-term proposal under which the players’ share eventually decreases to the same 49-51 percent band the NBA players accepted last season if the NHL guarantees all existing contracts through their entirety at an escrow rate capped at no more than five percent and the systems issues are not overhauled.
That’s the basis of a settlement. That’s the foundation of what may not necessarily be a fair deal for the players, but the fairest one they can expect to get from the Sixth Avenue nihilists who cancel games as a matter of course the way banks cancel checks.
If good faith existed here, now would be the time for Don Fehr, who had a second-round of private talks with Bettman yesterday, and the NHLPA to make the proposal that could save the 82-game schedule. But it doesn’t. This is a fast-track lockout with, and you had better believe this, a drop-dead date already established by the Boardroom powers-that-be that could be as early as Thanksgiving.
Thus, the union faces the distinct possibility — if not likelihood — such an offer would be interpreted by Bettman and his hawks as a sign of weakness and evidence of a crack in the players’ resolve to lose another season and as evidence the deal will only become better for the owners once the athletes miss three or four paychecks.
It is the owners’ commissioner who doesn’t believe in win-win negotiating, even when the by-product of such an approach represents a loss for the NHL as a brand and a credible operation.
But there is no reason the players couldn’t find a way to back-channel their willingness to accept such a deal if the Board would act on it in good faith. The last time around, the league was able to run end-arounds on PA leadership. This time, the opportunity exists for senior players to return the favor by enlisting their respective owners in the cause.
The NBA players got a better deal last November than they had been offered in September and October, but they lost nearly 20 percent of their 2011-12 pay with the reduction of the schedule.
The NHL players got a better deal in July 2005 than they had been offered at any time the previous 12 months, but they lost an entire season of pay and an entire season of their respective careers.
It is 11 days before the scheduled regular-season openers and there is an absence of negotiating that is a result of an absence of good faith.
This is about as Mickey Mouse a scenario as the one in Seattle on Monday night. Only the No Hockey League doesn’t recognize it. To this gang, this is business as usual.
* Rick Nash seems to have escaped a serious shoulder injury after being checked into the boards on Friday while playing for HC Davos in the Swiss League. An MRI exam on the Rangers’ putative first-line power winger revealed no damage as a result of the first-period blow he took that forced him from the match against HC Lugano.
Nash, who has been deemed the Swiss equivalent of “day to day,” apparently is remaining with HC Davos despite the mishap, at least for the short term.
Regardless of the severity of the injury, Nash is forbidden to receive treatment from Rangers athletic trainer Jim Ramsay during the lockout.
Smart, isn’t it? Lock them out, leave them on their own.
Oilers owner Daryl Katz, the 13th-wealthiest individual in Canada with a net worth of $2 billion, according to Forbes, doesn’t apologize to the citizens of Edmonton for continuing to have his hand out, nor for not adequately explaining to them why he needs even more of a handout to build a new arena that would prevent the team from relocating to, say, Seattle.
This, though, is how one becomes the 13th-wealthiest person in any country: by spending and investing other people’s money for his own benefit.
Finally, the NFL’s all-encompassing statement endorsing Monday’s call as obtained by Slap Shots: “The simultaneous reception ruling was correct, Brett Hull’s goal was legal in 1999, and Mike Francesa did not fall asleep listening to Sweeny Murti.”