Topper wrote:I disagree HW. The League is trying to plug a couple of holes in the last CBA that that they see as a detriment to the game.
Are you sure this statement isn't a little to much an over-simplification?
In retrospect, perhaps we should not have been surprised that this was always going to be a battle royale.
It seems to me that after this last week, with Fehr ( perhaps) over reaching on the "concessions" given up by the moderates; the players are getting their money's worth.
The players say they gave up so much in the last CBA that they are now owed something back for that. Hogwash. Owners, player and the league all did well under the previous CBA.
I think listening to the players position what they have been saying is they do not want to give up what they got in return for what gave up in the last CBA.
Or to flip it around: having got what they wanted last time, the owners are trying to claw back what they had to give up to get a deal last time.
Refusing to fix a few holes in that agreement is undoing a lot of those gains. Fans and sponsors are leaving and will need to be wooed back into the fold.
Again you make it sound so simple and put the onus on the players, is there no nod here to the fact that its the owners who drive the bus? They could get their needs met without a shotgun to the head.
Or maybe not? Maybe it is all about the heavy handed tactics from the last time around. Not the cap or the linkage, but the 24% roll back that even Bettman mentioned in his presser...
anyway,
I agree that this is doing damage but its also awesome drama and no press is bad press, so what the final tab for this shindig will shake out to, might not be as bad as all that.
We heard last night "the hill we die on". The League hates long term back diving contracts. They are a hole in the last CBA exploited by both GM's and players/agents that the league see's as a long term detriment to the game. They corralled the Kovalchuck deal in the making because it pushed the extreme. The cry was that these deals would only go to the elite of the game, but when guys like Ehrhoff get front loaded long term deals, the League has decided enough is enough.
You can't blame GM's and owners for signing these deals. The structure was permitted under the old CBA and teams can not collude not to sign these deals. The League wants these out of the game. I can not understand why they haven't also gone after signing bonus money. Maybe that is their concession to the NHLPA for eliminating long term deals.
I think that collusion is a red herring, no owner has to collude to not bite on stupid long term deals, and almost all long term deals are stupid.
28 teams walked away from Kovalchuk and even Luongo's deal is a cautionary tale for future signings.
Having said that though, there needs to be a damper on such deals as Bettman pointed out that there was one big deal in 2004 and now there are 90 ... Reflected in your list below..
The other thing the League is demanding is 50/50 HRR split. Ownership remembers the $0.65US Canuck buck and what it did to Canadian teams. It is the very reason we now have revenue sharing. We heard Bettman last night talk of real dollars, compensating for the varying US$/CDN$ exchange rates, and its effect on HRR. Even when politics rounds off the fiscal cliff, it does nothing to correct the uncertain and bleak long term economic outlook in the US. All the NHLPA proposals to date are tied to increasing HRR. Completely blind to economic reality.
Time and again this argument is presented on here without anyone (to my knowledge) acknowledging that revenues have gone steadily up through the worst global economic times since the Great Depression, with markets collapsing in all over the place and oil and fuel prices at all time highs, with no end in sight, people are still paying top dollar for hockey tickets. So what's wrong with planning for revenue to continue especially when the players proposal work out to roughly the same dollars?
Could it be that my suspicion is correct and that actual HRR and reported HRR are not the same thing and that's why there is no agreement?
At the very least something is not coming out in the wash here...
Incidentally, a ten year deal fits nicely with the NBC/Comcast (hello Mr Snider) term.
That's cool an all, but did you notice the way Bettman commented on how he was selling the extra 100 million in the make whole provision to his owners "In effect its buying a couple of extra years?"
Sounds to me like the salary savings on a ten year deal instead of an 8 year deal makes up on the 100 million so the players are paying for the broken contracts out of their own pocket,
Or in other words, the pea is under the other shell and that's why Fehr went all fuck you yesterday.