BOSTON — Here, essentially, is the message presumptive NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr has been presenting to the players during the autumn tour preceding union balloting: “Hire me to lead or don’t hire me at all.”
This, according to sources, is the ultimate condition of employment for Fehr, who has been selling nothing more than himself and his collective bargaining accomplishments as leader of the MLBPA throughout this low-key campaign that was borne as much out of a draft as a burning desire to go to the table (or the mat) one more time on behalf of professional athletes.
The PA will not operate as a democracy in collective bargaining. It can’t. It must give its leader the same authority as the NHL has given Gary Bettman. If not, the league simply will wait for the players’ house to divide and fall, as it did the last time. If not, the players might as well give in now and save everyone the aggravation when the collective bargaining agreement expires before 2012-13.
That’s the meaning of the message Fehr has been delivering to the players, who, we’re told, have been nothing but receptive to it.
Fehr’s union won peace with Bud Selig and MLB last decade by creating and presenting a viable revenue sharing and competitive balance tax to the owners that significantly improved the bottom line for baseball’s small markets.
That seems to be the bottom line in Bettman’s NHL, as well, the small markets, those for whom the commissioner always fights, even those markets that have never been able to generate major league revenue.
The NHL’s problem isn’t payroll, though that’s the area on which Sixth Avenue fixates. The league’s problem is revenue. Bettman enjoys boasting about increasing revenue since the canceled 2004-05 season, but the increases are almost entirely due to the surging Canadian dollar and increased ticket prices.
Failing markets dot the landscape of the league in which up to 92-percent of gross revenue is generated locally. Bettman’s approach to collective bargaining focuses on slashing labor costs. Fehr’s, on the other hand, focuses on increasing revenue for those franchises that are unable to create them on their own.
Bettman pledged the system currently in place would save the league’s small markets in guaranteeing a chicken in every pot through the last lockout. The commissioner was wrong. There is little reason for anyone to believe that the tightened cap regulations he and the league will offer next time will be an elixir for anyone’s problems.
Put it this way: forcing the Rangers to count Wade Redden’s salary under the cap even if he’s in the AHL isn’t going to put a nickel more in the till in Florida, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Anaheim, St. Louis, Atlanta, Nashville, Columbus or Phoenix, all markets in historical distress.
It’s impossible to believe Fehr, an iconic figure who is not perfect, is accepting the challenge here in order to preside over massive union givebacks or a year of lost wages. It is hard to believe Bettman truly believes the league could sustain itself through a second canceled season in nine years, especially when the league isn’t at all likely to receive the same public support it did the last time.
Bettman has invited the last two union leaders, Ted Saskin and Paul Kelly, to address their partners at the Board of Governors. Surely, the commissioner would grant the same courtesy to Fehr, who, when the time is right, would then have the opportunity to present his vision for the league to the owners without interference or accompanying propaganda.
And it is a vision focused on increasing revenue for small markets while granting big markets more air to breathe. Why wouldn’t the owners want to listen?
Words rarely typed: Gary and the NHL nailed it.
The six-game suspension assessed to Vancouver’s Rick Rypien
for grabbing a heckler in the stands in Minnesota on Tuesday was punishment that fit the crime that was more of a misdemeanor than a felony.
A line was crossed and everyone understands that. But it’s not as if the athlete climbed into the stands or dragged the spectator out of the stands to deliver a beat-down or even throw a punch.
Rypien lost his temper, lost his way and now he will lose six games and approximately $40,000 in salary. If it happens again in the league — and really, this kind of behavior is an aberration, unlike say, blows to the head that continue to confound — the punishment will be far stiffer, as it should and must be.
Next September, the Rangers surely will waive Redden as obligated in order to remove his $6.5M charge from the 2011-12 cap. At that point, if the defenseman would like to return to the NHL for a far lesser salary than he would earn in the AHL (or Europe), he will have that option.
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly
confirmed in an e-mail to The Post on Friday that if Redden refuses to report to Hartford next September if and when he’s assigned, the Rangers would be able to terminate his contract under terms of the CBA just as the Devils terminated Brendan Shanahan
‘s contract last year when he refused to report to the AHL after he went unclaimed on waivers.
There is, Daly wrote, no difference whatsoever between the cases, even if Shanahan was operating under a one-year deal for $1M and Redden would have three years worth $16.5M remaining on his contract.
“The Devils [terminated]. So could the Rangers,” Daly wrote.
Under that scenario, Redden would become a free agent. Would he consider it? Would he attempt one more shot at the NHL for third-pair money?
That’s impossible to know. The point is, however, the option will be his.