Three weeks shy of an NHL lockout, the two sides can’t agree what ingredients are in the pie, much less how to slice it. Perhaps the small group of four executive chefs gathering in New York early next week will have more success. Two days of owners and players butting heads in Toronto this week did very little, except to sniff at the other’s recipe for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Brief discussions in Toronto ended Thursday with the owners hearing full formal details of the players’ proposal on economic systems and contracts, a plan the owners already had panned in large part last week. So the 4 principals in the talks, Bettman, deputy commissioner Bill Daly, union executive director Donald Fehr and brother Steve his lieutenant, will meet alone in New York on Tuesday in what was originally to be the start of marathon bargaining with all big guns from both sides. Bettman said the intervening four-day lull in talks would provide “homework” time for both sides. The current CBA expires Sept. 15 and the owners are ready to chain the dressing room doors, to the chagrin of players and fans who lost the entire 2004-05 season to the labour war. But a wide gap in philosophy remains. The players have agreed to reduce their 57% share of revenues closer to the 50% range that was accepted by the other three major sports. The owners want that as low as 43%, but there are conflicting beliefs on how hockey related revenues are calculated in the first place. Yet owners are still offering mega-dollar contracts, some longer than the five-year maximum they’ve demanded the union now accept. The one good thing from the two days of Toronto meetings, both which lasted just half a day, were that the sides are still cordial, compared to the personal acrimony that marked 2004’s showdown between Bettman and union head Bob Goodenow.
Donald Fehr Quotes: “Hopefully it will be productive when we get to (Tuesday), I still believe there’s enough time, if there’s a mutual will (to avoid a shutdown).”
Gary Bettman Quotes: “It’s fair to say we’re far apart in that regard. We’re at a point where it’s difficult to move this process along until we deal with fundamental economic issues. We believe we are paying the players more than we should. The union is looking for a system with more flexibility and we’re looking for one with less, more akin to what we envisioned eight years ago (heading into the last CBA). It would be difficult to move anything else along (the many outstanding CBA issues). So we’ll each do some homework in the next few days, hopefully to find a way to get on the same page. It’s a good idea to get together with just the four of us. Big group, small group, the tone has been businesslike and courteous. Even though we’re in negotiation and far apart, there is recognition of our issues from a union standpoint and that is a positive. It was clear we understood (the players’ offer). We went back and suggested a framework using some elements of the proposal to try and form a basis to go forward.”
Calgary Herald
The first mistake you can make when thinking about the coming NHL lockout is thinking about it at all, but let's blow right past that to the second mistake, which is thinking that it might be about what's fair. Labour negotiations are not about what's fair. Labour negotiations are about leverage. The National Hockey League and its players are headed for a lockout on Sept. 15 because of leverage . The two sides have exchanged opening proposals, but NHL commissioner Gary Bettman came out of their meeting Thursday and said: "It's clear that we're at a point where it's going to be difficult to move this process along until we deal with the fundamental economic issues . And certainly as it relates to the fundamental economic issue, we are far apart both in terms of magnitude and structure."
At its cold beating heart, this is about money. Players currently make 57 per cent of hockey-related revenues . The owners have proposed 43 per cent. As Bettman put it when asked why a league whose revenues have risen to $3.3billion US per year needs to alter its fundamentals: "We believe that we're paying out more than we should be, and it's as simple as that."
It is probably not fair that the NHL's billionaire owners all but wrote the last collective bargaining agreement at the point of a gun, and are coming back now for more because they didn't write it terribly well, and that a league that has over-expanded and crammed franchises into all kinds of unprofitable sinkholes is now trying to fix itself by taking money back from the players and laying off employees as business booms. But it worked in the NFL, which wasn't even pretending to lose money. It worked in the NBA, which was. Antipathy, rancour, missed games, missed paycheques, lost revenues, a shortened season, a storm of condemnation, and, in the worst-case scenario, lasting damage to the game. The owners, like every set of owners in every CBA negotiation of the modern era, are counting on the players missing paycheques. The owners that lose money playing hockey are counting on losing less money while not playing hockey. The rich teams are most likely gritting their teeth and counting on making back any money they lose over the course of a more favourable agreement. If the sides were close, perhaps clear heads would prevail. They aren't. So in football parlance, that's what will move the pile. Until then, there is no pressure except for the big one: Losing a significant amount of revenue to fan anger and damaging hockey. In a league with so many struggling markets, that could be a worry. But the most important leverage may be the leverage hockey has over its fans . Asked Thursday if the way the game recovered from the 2004-05 lockout gave him confidence it would recover again. There it is. People will come, Ray. That is where the NHL is negotiating from, and that is why these kabuki negotiations aren't even foreplay; they're text messages, setting the basic parameters for interaction. For the owners the pressure points are not now, and they are not later. Any deal they sign will presumably be worth more to the league's struggling markets than they will lose, or near enough. And that is why the battle for public opinion in this lockout won't matter unless fan anger is actually carried over when they actually start playing games again - and last time that didn't happen. One of the chief problems the NHL had with the last CBA is that it linked player salaries and revenues, and revenues skyrocketed from $1.8billion US to $3.3-billion US in seven years. Part of that was the Canadian dollar, but not all of it. The owners believe the dollars will come back again, even if another Stanley Cup is wasted, because it has happened before. There was essentially no way to avoid this. The union did not open negotiations until the end of June, in part because Fehr had a lot of catching up to do after coming from baseball, which he did because this union was broken, which was in large part the result of the last lockout. This is all history, coming to a head. The two sides will meet in New York on Tuesday.
At its cold beating heart, this is about money. Players currently make 57 per cent of hockey-related revenues . The owners have proposed 43 per cent. As Bettman put it when asked why a league whose revenues have risen to $3.3billion US per year needs to alter its fundamentals: "We believe that we're paying out more than we should be, and it's as simple as that."
It is probably not fair that the NHL's billionaire owners all but wrote the last collective bargaining agreement at the point of a gun, and are coming back now for more because they didn't write it terribly well, and that a league that has over-expanded and crammed franchises into all kinds of unprofitable sinkholes is now trying to fix itself by taking money back from the players and laying off employees as business booms. But it worked in the NFL, which wasn't even pretending to lose money. It worked in the NBA, which was. Antipathy, rancour, missed games, missed paycheques, lost revenues, a shortened season, a storm of condemnation, and, in the worst-case scenario, lasting damage to the game. The owners, like every set of owners in every CBA negotiation of the modern era, are counting on the players missing paycheques. The owners that lose money playing hockey are counting on losing less money while not playing hockey. The rich teams are most likely gritting their teeth and counting on making back any money they lose over the course of a more favourable agreement. If the sides were close, perhaps clear heads would prevail. They aren't. So in football parlance, that's what will move the pile. Until then, there is no pressure except for the big one: Losing a significant amount of revenue to fan anger and damaging hockey. In a league with so many struggling markets, that could be a worry. But the most important leverage may be the leverage hockey has over its fans . Asked Thursday if the way the game recovered from the 2004-05 lockout gave him confidence it would recover again. There it is. People will come, Ray. That is where the NHL is negotiating from, and that is why these kabuki negotiations aren't even foreplay; they're text messages, setting the basic parameters for interaction. For the owners the pressure points are not now, and they are not later. Any deal they sign will presumably be worth more to the league's struggling markets than they will lose, or near enough. And that is why the battle for public opinion in this lockout won't matter unless fan anger is actually carried over when they actually start playing games again - and last time that didn't happen. One of the chief problems the NHL had with the last CBA is that it linked player salaries and revenues, and revenues skyrocketed from $1.8billion US to $3.3-billion US in seven years. Part of that was the Canadian dollar, but not all of it. The owners believe the dollars will come back again, even if another Stanley Cup is wasted, because it has happened before. There was essentially no way to avoid this. The union did not open negotiations until the end of June, in part because Fehr had a lot of catching up to do after coming from baseball, which he did because this union was broken, which was in large part the result of the last lockout. This is all history, coming to a head. The two sides will meet in New York on Tuesday.
Fehr quotes: "Everybody understands that every employer would like to pay less. That's not a surprise. It is a disappointment sometimes, but it's not a surprise. If there's going to be a lockout, that's something the owners will choose or not choose, you would have missed games, you would have lost revenues, you would have missed paycheques. But that doesn't mean the parties don't understand going into it that would be the case. We will meet on tuesday to focus on core economic issues going forward."
Bettman quotes: "One, we're focused on trying to make a deal. We don't want a work stoppage. But obviously, if we don't have a deal, we feel we have no choice. And two, we recovered well last time because we have the world's greatest fans. There is a wide gap between us."
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