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PepNCheese said:The players should be responsible for motivating the owners to be honest? I find that morality rather twisted.
It's hard to police a group of people who will lie to the IRS. NHL apologists like to sweep this issue under the rug, just like Jacobs tried to do with his broadcast revenues. No dice.
It's called an airtight business partnership Pep. Happens all the time in the real world, where big former competitors come togther and hire well paid lawyers to make sure they don't get ripped off.
Goodenow's every move has been designed to ensure that competition between franchises will ensure the salary spiral continues and that the big spenders get to continue to set the market for the league.An "inflationary loophole" in the most current context being...?
The league has been trying to get Bob to negotiate for years. He still hasn't begun. The offers made so far were simply to make impasse difficult or attempt to get a split in the ownership group.Bettman turned it into a war. He locked out the players and proceeded to pound them with the same thing over and over. It's only when the owners realized that replacements were going to fail that they decided to start negotiating for real.
A smarter leader for the league would have realized that true victory was won with the salary cap offer from the players. A smarter leader would have realized the deal should have been signed right then, and any possible damage for the following season averted. Instead, Bettman decided to go for the home run.
A smart leader knows his opponent well. Bettman know Goodenow like the back of his hand. Gary has handled this exactly how it was needed considering the man he's up against.
The salary cap offer was not designed to get a deal done, but simply to throw a wrench in the impasse works. The numbers were ridiculously high and clause 7 indexing them to the low point in revenues next season was a classic poison pill, designed to make the deal unsellable to ownership.