Jobu said:
No, I said a player should be paid the same as a player of similar age, experience, performance, etc. He should be valued at his market value, not some artificial limiting factor. This market value may very well be 25% or less of an increase from his most recently salary. What you're arguing for is the ability for teams to lock a player into a 3-year deal at a 25% salary increase when his market value could and should be 5 times that. For example, Todd Bertuzzi would be making millions of dollars less than players who have performed similarly through his most recent platform season.
This is an artificial limiting factor as well. It's simply one that would be incredibly difficult to decide, and there would be endless arguments going on trying to decide which factors were more important in each individuals case.
No, I am not arguing for a 25% cap that can be "forced" on a player for three years. I just disagree with your opinion on how things should be run, and that players have the right to huge salaries the moment the score some goals... which you seem to have backed off on to a degree with this statement.
Well, it can't exist for neither unless you want unrestricted free agency at the end of every contract. However, I have argued all along for two-way arbitration.
I wasn't disagreeing with this point.
I thought that's what you WERE arguing in your first paragraph? As for linking revenues with salaries, that is another tipic, but also completely absurd. As others have pointed out, this completely leaves players to the whim of NHL fortune and managerial marketing competence. If Bettman is unable to sign a TV deal due to his incompetence, or no one watches hockey in all of the crappy markets the NHL is in, players' salaries go down.
I am arguing that there has to be a limit to players expectations regarding how much they can demand after a good season of hockey. Obviously if a player plays better than he was expected to, he should be able to earn more money on his next contract. I hope this is clear. But even the PA is happy to put a mechanism in place that limits rookies, so I don't see why something similiar can't be thought of for second contracts... etc etc. That said, I'm not sold on deciding things in this fashion.
Oh the horror! Players being accountable for helping make their work place better! The Owners are paying the whole tab, regardless of how poorly a player performs, but has to consistantly raise the level of pay to the players, and substantially so should they actually out perform expectations, but you think it's unreasonable to hold the players to any kind of accountability? That makes, well no sense at all.
If you want to argue for a salary cap, that's one thing. But to link it to revenues on top of that is so absurd that I can't believe anyone who puts himself in the players' shoes for a second would think of it as at all reasonable.
A league salary cap linked to 54% to 60% of league revenue is unreasonable? I'm sorry, but the PA has already offered to reduce their pay to that level. The league stands to be able to generate more money, which in turn is split between players and owners in a way that gives more to players. It just makes them more accountable, which IMO is a good thing, because they will invest their better hockey sense in making a better game. The more responsible the players are for their salaries, the better the game is going to be for the fans. I think this is an extremely important point.
Relative to what are the players underpaid? Please, not another "doctors and teachers should make more" argument. The fact is, players are the product and generate billions of dollars for their employers; without players, there is nothing. They deserve a significant piece of the pie.
Underpaid? Today the players are "overpaid" in relation to how much revenue they produce for their workplace. The players are not the product. The product is Ice Hockey. If the product were only the players, then they wouldn't need hockey to earn it. The owners pay the players to play the game. Without Ice Hockey the players have nothing. Yes players do deserve a significant piece of the pie. How you imagine they aren't getting that is difficult to understand. They are being offered the same amount of money they've conceded they are willing to take, with the concession that the salaries don't escalate beyond the percentage of revenue the league earns. This is not an evil or unrealistic expectation asked by the owners.
It's the NHLPA who has made the creative proposals thus far; all the owners have done is re-package completely non-starter issues several times. For them to expect an impasse declaration is a joke
Yes, the PA has made some creative proposals. But frankly none of them address the inflationary aspect of salaries. The Owners have to make things right this time, because once a deal is signed they are competing against one another. They're going to try and find loop holes to give players more money, to give their teams an advantage. The players will still be able to work and bargain as a unit without charges of collusion. I do agree the Owners don't seem to have given much, but I believe they are willing to mover on a fair number of things... but linking salary to revenue isn't one of them. I could be wrong for sure... we'll have to wait and see.
I never said anything about an impass declaration.