djhn579 said:
The current players that would be on strike at that point could try to form picket lines, but I fully believe more than half of the players would be playing in the NHL. The rest of the players I doubt will get much support from other unions. The people in these other unions are already not making money from NHL games. If replacement players are bought in next season, those people will be very happy for the income since they probably didn't have a lot of money saved like the hockey players.
And as I mentioned, the more they decrease attendance and revenues, the smaller the pie will be when they eventually come back to work.
As Tom Benjamin has stated a few times on these boards, next summer's training camp and subsequent league's starting date are probably the only time the replacement players would have a chance to work. Mind you, IIHF and NHL's contract is over, and not many European players in their prime years (~24~30) who have a good shot of making the roster of a major European league club, would come to play in replacement NHL if that risks their spot in that European team and an existing or future multi-year contract worth tens or maybe even hundrerds of thousands of dollars. Not for anything other than similar/more guaranteed money.
And even the better North American replacement players would probably have to paid quite decent money as compared to other leagues.
And if a draft is lost, some European younsters might not want to head to AHL and other minor leagues either with uncertain future of the NHL. Not to mention if several drafts are lost.
And how many of the former workers in arenas would be still willing to work there and with what kind of contracts, could they be paid the same money with replacement league and for how long? Surely in a couple of years most of them have found some other job. So other unions' support might not be such a far fetch afterall.
If and when NHL returns, what kind of a league it would be, is open to question. If a few now money-losing teams might have to fold if nothing is changed in the CBA and might have to fold if there's no cap in the new CBA, those teams have really nothing to lose, so they don't mind waiting.
And while the profit-making teams could now estimate that they will easily recover the lost profits of a season or two under a capped system, the longer this goes the more risks for even those teams there are. So that teacher's pension fund might have to sell some of its' share of the Leafs (which they might do anyway), to finance whatever it eventually intends to finance (pensions?) with that money.
If a season is lost and the risks of losing another one seem high a year from now and the two sides negotiation stances are the same as they are now, certainly quite a few owners might do some re-calculating how long it takes to recover the money in a capped system as compared to some sort of compromise. Especially as the date for the start and duration of that capped-system league would still be unknown.
Of course there is pressure for players as well, but it isn't about recovering the lost money, because a vast majority of them could easily figure out that during the remainder of their career they're never gonna get the money back they've lost/will lose during this lockout.