The players gave-in in 95 and by 98 it wasn't enough. They gave in 2005 and by 2008, it still wasn't enough. You'll have to excuse them for thinking Bettman wants them to put a Band-Aid on a shot gun wound. Linking the cap to league-wide revenues will NEVER work long-term without meaningful revenue sharing.
Only game being played is the blame game(CBA Negotiation discussion thread) - Part IV
- Thread starter ColePens
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Comparing these leagues to "real life" is ridiculous. These guys have a specific skill set that can not be duplicated by the general public. Most "real life" jobs do not include people paying good money to come watch you perform your job. Most "real life" jobs do not include tv networks paying huge money so people around the continent can watch you do your job.
The owners have been crying about the league not being in financial shape for 20 years and all they want to do is have the players take pay cuts. Then, agree and for the first few years after the deal is made we listen to Gary the Moron yap about how the game is doing well, and the new CBA is what the league needed. Then we get near the end of the CBA and his tune changes. How people can trust anything the owners are saying or actually believe any of their ideas will work long-term is beyond me.
JAX
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Wow, what a bunch, waste another season and get a worse deal then before. Fehr must be a master brainwasher.
bruinsfan001
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- Apr 2, 2010
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Doesn't matter. All the job growth is in China.
Anyhoo...
My translation? Daly -- We're not budging but if I keep saying that we're waiting on the players, it will make it look like we did something new.
My way or the highway.
I don't think it should be interpreted that way at all. The NHLPA simply isn't providing a proposal at this time. Either they are waiting till the last minute or they are relying on an unrealistic outcome (very foolish). I think its fairly clear the NHL is willing to negotiate if the NHLPA would just provide something to work with. At this point the PA are the ones stalling things and if the core negotiations don't resume its on their heads IMO.
If that were to happen I know for a fact I will never purchase tickets again or contribute anything back to the league. Why? simply put, It doesn't make sense to contribute to a league that doesn't give a **** about its fans.
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To Gary Bettman:
Those who lack the ability to accept their own failures are often the self proclaimed experts in explaining what is wrong with everyone else.
19Yzerman19
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- Jul 17, 2004
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Take a look at what the Toronto's lose in gate receipts alone. In Toronto it's 2.4m per home game! Not forgetting parking, beer, hot dog and so on.
Speaking of leadership? Who was it that brokered that ridiculous initial CBA offer?
Lord Helix
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JAX
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and they countered another one with better numbers. The PA's offer really just limited their raises and a way for the teams to share money amongst themselves so the players can keep their pay levels where they are at.
Tra La La
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Lord Helix
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FuriousSenator
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The NHL then owes NBC a free year! Rest assured the nhlpa make sure it is free if owners are collecting free money right now.
Tra La La
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From my point of view the biggest thorn in the players side is escrow. which is why they want to de-link from revenue. BUT every time they had the chance to save themselves some escrow- Not invoke the escalator, like kids in the chocolate factory they had to have it all. Then when the stomach ache comes (not getting escrow back) whoa it hurts.
Sorry but the game needs the hard cap, linked to revenue. It needs a fairer split. And it needs the escalator to go to the otherworld.
Sorry but the game needs the hard cap, linked to revenue. It needs a fairer split. And it needs the escalator to go to the otherworld.
Who wrote and jammed it down throats of the players again? Who was okay with current system until it became advantageous to the nhlpa?
Lord Helix
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How much is Toronto, NYR, Montreal, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and Philly losing per game again?
Lord Helix
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They're not losing because they're not putting any money in, but I know where you're going with this. Regardless, the owners (as a whole) can afford to not make or lose money. The players can't. Half the players are now unemployed.
BLONG7
Registered User
The 700 players still lose more...hence why they should be negotiating...both sides need one another, neither wants to admit it...
1.87B X Zero is ZERO...unfortunate, and yes, I am more on the players side this time...
Don't you get it man?
For every Toronto there's 2 Phoenix's that save 2.4 mill per game just by not playing.
C'mon use yer head
You realize the owners of the teams you mentioned own other businesses right? As in, they won't make a cent with the hockey side but they still make money off of the entertainment bookings on the now open arena dates(more concerts and various shows), etc. They won't be on their knees because of massive lost revenue if that's what you are hoping. On the players side, they will lose 100% of the NHL paycheck. Some players will still make money by playing in other leagues but it's not even close to what the NHL contracts are money wise.
This is rather long but this is from a writer who's in touch with many players. It's really not about money it's about anger:
When people ask me these days if an NHL season will happen, my quick response now is: no.
If you’d asked me this past spring or the main months of the summer, I’d have said “Yes, eventually.†Now? No, I don’t think so. I’d put the odds at 15-85 that a season will happen at all.
This is a sad story with no winners, but the tagline of the story is this: the players in the NHL are sick and tired of Gary Bettman, and they will sacrifice their greater financial good to drive this man out of their game.
That’s how much they hate him.
It really has come to this awful juncture, an irreconcilable difference in the minds of the players that they must defeat Bettman at all costs. I have spent the last couple months or so in regular contact with a wide number of players, and this is what it has come down to – sadly.
NHL players are a unique breed. They can lose a fight with dignity, but they never forget and they always try to even the score eventually. They lost and lost big to Bettman in 2005. They admitted it and said there were no hard feelings after their year-long fight that cost the whole season over monetary issues.
But for seven years now, they have been the guy in the penalty box with their hand wrapped in ice and a welt under the eye, just waiting for the gate to open for another crack at the other guy. Now that the gate has opened, they are ready for Round II. They are ready to give it back to Bettman and the group of what they believe are their arrogant landlords, who pay them a decent wage, yes, but who they believe show them zero respect. They truly believe that they are thought of as just “cattle†by their landlords, and we only have to go back a couple weeks to get a better understanding of why they might think this.
Players – however right or wrong their reasoning – truly do see things this way: “Bettman beat us last time, but he showed us up with a bunch of gyrations after the fight was over. Time to hammer him back this time.â€
Players lost a collective 23-percent of gross share of hockey-related revenue when the last CBA was signed in 2005 – not including a 24-percent immediate rollback in existing salaries. Then, they saw overall revenues of the game grow from $1.9 billion to $3.3 million in seven years. True, they still got 57-percent of that revenue and saw their average salaries grow from about $1.4 million to $2.1 million in that span, but in their minds they deserved every cent of that money and probably should have gotten more.
Thing is, ask most players what would be a fair number as to their overall collective take of HRR going forward, and (again, most players, not all) will say something close to a 50-50 split. They know they are players, and owners are owners, and owners have the deeper pockets. That’s fine with them.
But what got this whole off-season off to such a toxic atmosphere was Bettman’s laughable initial offer to the players. You know, the one that said HRR should be redefined and that players should only get 43-percent of the new pie and that arbitration should be eliminated and that contracts should only be five years max and each players’ first-born son must undergo electric-shock therapy and live simultaneously for six years in Siberia before going back to their parents.
OK, so that last one is a joke. But the rest of it was the league’s real offer, but no less of a joke to the players.
Donald Fehr, the former MLB players union boss who learned the trade at the foot of Marvin Miller, essentially never even responded to the league’s ridiculous offer. He has circumvented any mention of that offer with more mature and thoughtful-sounding proposals, but which essentially offer nothing in the way of concessions after a three-year trial period of sorts that, if all goes according to the NHLPA’s plan, would restore everything as was current with the last CBA.
The players union currently is meeting with the NHL in New York. But nothing approximating any real talks about the “significant gulf†of the main issue between the parties – the percentage of HRR split – is expected to be on the table. Instead, the parties are talking about tangential issues that have zero bearing on whether the lockout will end in time to salvage a full season – which nobody believes will happen.
It’s like the sides are in a divorce proceeding and agreeing on things like when Tommy and Julie will be dropped off at the other parent’s apartment for the weekend, but getting nowhere on the issue of: can the marriage be saved still?
The players know they are going down the road of “cutting off their noses to spite their face.†They know they lose the most should a full season be cancelled.
But they are willing to do it, if it means salvaging their pride from the last time around. They are willing to do it if it means the possibility of kicking Gary Bettman in the ass this time, giving him a good pounding he won’t forget and knocking that smirk off his face that’s been there the last seven years.
Bettman’s deputy, Bill Daly, has assumed his side would see new concessions from the players on a new CBA, especially on their percentage take for this coming season. It’s the only way, he’s said, things can move forward. Well, he’s not going to see any concessions on this coming season, I believe, after talking with too many players.
The players likely will give on the percentage over the coming years, dropping down closer to 50 percent over a five- or six-year deal. But not this first year they won’t. The players have it in their heads of a line that can’t be crossed for this coming season. They are not going to drop much at all below 57 percent, and they certainly are not going to capitulate all the way down to 47 percent or whatever folly number it is in their minds that Bettman wants to shove down their throats.
The players know they are players and owners are owners, and something in the neighborhood of 50-50 after a few years is something they can say “Yeah, that’s only fair probably, we can live with that, it’s still a darn good living and 50-percent of revenues in five or six years probably will be worth more than 57 of today’s revenues anyway.â€
But this first year of a new CBA – that’s the Maginot line for the players. They aren’t going to take much less than 57, and certainly nothing on the order of 47. They’ll sit out the whole year if there is no alternative.
They’ll let Bettman and his crew of 30 owners wrestle with all those empty dates and lost revenues from the playoffs and Winter Classic. Half the players will make some cash in Europe, and the rest of the rank-and-file will take about $10-15K a month in NHLPA war chest money. They’ll get by on that for a year anyway.
It all comes down to this simple truth, to the players: no way in hell is the short, old guy with the New York accent who never played the game going to push them around this time. They have their rallying cry this time, and his name is Gary Bettman, and anything short of total victory over this man won’t be acceptable to the rank-and-file of the NHL players union this time around.
Total victory may not mean actually driving him out of the game. But it will mean, at the least, not getting some capricious new offer shoved down their throats. It will mean coming back to the game with their heads held high, their resolve as a body never to be questioned again.
The owners, under Bettman’s lead, may feel they can push the players around again this time. But it won’t happen. They are ready and willing to smack the bully in the mouth this time.
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