Strike Brewing?

Our old friend Larry Brooks just couldn't contain himself last week reporting about the hiring of a New Head Thug for the NHLPA. However a more sober reporter, TSN's Bob McKenzie, says Kelly is truly independent and won't be a lap dog for the factions that Brooks is a mouthpiece for. McKenzie also points out (and said on TSN during the Florida-Montreal game on Tuesday night) that any labor stoppage in 2009 would have to come from a player strike and not another owner lockout.

I just figured Ol' Lar was shooting his mouth of again but before I left for the game last night, I read this article and I'm beginning to wonder, is Ol' Lar just shooting his mouth off? It's easy to discount Ol' Lar because he'll contradict himself in the same column but I don't know much about Bruce Dowbiggin. Is he a Union Thug mouthpiece like Ol' Lar?

Oh Caps Nut, you're just being paranoid, there's no way the NHLPA will reopen the CBA and call a strike in 2009...

Maybe I am being paranoid but I remember the run-up to 2004-2005. There was talk two seasons ahead that the NHL was heading for another lockout and that it could very well cost the NHL an entire season (which it did). And while we do have sober reporters saying it won't happen, who knows what is going to happen over the next two years. That is more than enough time for the dissidents to increase their support. 2009 sounds about the time that another round of misguided expansion will be coming into play, putting more $$$$$ on the table for the players and more players into the union to dilute their hard liner factions. But if the NHL is going to expand for the 2009-2010 season, they need to get the ball rolling on that one sooner rather than later and award the franchises sometime after the New Year.

But let me say this. Should the NHLPA reopen the CBA and call a strike, I will shut down this blog, cancel my Caps season tickets, and NEVER pay any attention to professional hockey ever again. If you think I'm joking, go ahead and try. I don't care if the Caps win the Stanley Cup in June of 2009, if there is a strike in 2009 (or later for that matter) I'm leaving and I won't be coming back. Ted can invite me to all the events he wants, I won't go and I won't even bother watching hockey on TV anymore.

I did not like the 1994 and 2004 lockouts but I understood that the NHL was trying to bring some fiscal sanity to help the small market franchises. Considering the amounts of $$$$$ the owners were (and still are) losing because of the lack of real TV revenue, it only made sense. The other option to bring salaries under control was contraction of some sort which is a total non-starter for the owners, players, and fans.

However, in 2009, the CBA will mandate a MINIMUM salary of $500,000. That will put a player in the 10% of ALL income earners in the United States. (For my left wing friends out there, these are the people that you hate seeing get tax cuts) While NHL players have only a limited amount of time to capitalize on their talents, these guys aren't hurting for income while they're playing. The largest source of revenue for NHL teams (which directly fund their salaries) is ticket revenue and that is not changing anytime in the near future. I cannot and will not justify paying higher ticket prices so that already rich hockey players get even richer playing a kids game.

And make no mistake; should the NHLPA talk a walk, it won't be about greater free agency, it won't be about benefits for themselves or former players. It will be about lifting the salary cap so that the handful of financially viable teams can inflate the salaries for the rest of the league and the players can demand more $$$$$. Gone will be the "hockey players are the most down-to-earth athletes around" persona they've spent so much time trying to build. They will be no different than the baseball players who shut down their sport over a few bucks. Baseball has had trouble rebuilding itself from that disaster and I know I won't be alone in giving up on hockey should the NHLPA do the same thing.

McKenzie points out that there needs to be some serious housecleaning at the NHLPA first. That should show us what direction the NHLPA will head in and let's hope that this talk of reopening the CBA and going on strike in 2009 dies a quick death. Because this is sounding too much like the run up to the lockout in 2004.

It's Their Party...

and Ted isn't invited anymore.

Far be it from me to tell these guys what they can and cannot do with their union but unless there's something more than e-mail snooping (which isn't a violation of privacy) going on the NHLPA is making a big mistake in getting rid of Saskin.

Here is the guy who negotiated a deal that gives them a guaranteed $475K a year (which will grow to $525K at the end of the deal). He saved the mandated 10% raise for players making under $660K and a 5% raise for players under $1 million. (I on the other hand, didn't receive any kind of raise this year because of a situation that had nothing to do with performance).

Yet the players are throwing him under the bus because of e-mail snooping? I'm sure some of them are angry about the salary cap, but consider this, the Salary Cap started out at $39 million for 2005-2006 and is projected to be about $47-49 million for 2007-2008. That would be a $10 million (26%) increase in just two years in a league that relies entirely upon ticket revenue. That my friends, is nothing short of incredible especially when CW says that the NHL shouldn't have been able to grow itself that quickly after throwing an entire season away the way that they did.

What is even more mystifying if you ask me is that these guys put up with (and in some cases even idolized) Bob Goodenow who by all accounts was an overbearing tyrant. I guess they preferred an in-your-face guy over a guy who conducted his operations in secret or were just tired of having their lives and contracts micro-managed.

But if the players want to be stupid, they can be stupid. Just remember this the next time your favorite team raises ticket prices or you lose a star player not so much because of cap considerations but because they're asking for a salary that the team cannot justify.

Union Goonery

Earlier this week, The Venerable Off Wing Opinion posted this interesting article about how the current NHL CBA got done and how Bob Goodenow was thrown under the bus.

I think this article deserves some closer attention to understanding what really went on...

The NHLPA’s constitution gives the executive board — made up of 30 club player representatives and a smaller group of players that made up the executive committee — the authority to make virtually all major decisions for the union.

Remember that. It will become important later on.

Detroit Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios got a call from someone in NHL management, although he would not identify the caller. “They were asking, ‘Could you talk Bob into accepting a cap for you guys?”’ Chelios said. “He said, ‘If we could get a cap, we could get a deal done.’ I said, ‘No way. I am not going to tell Bob how to do his job.’”

Calgary Flames right wing Jarome Iginla told Sun Media in March 2005 that “management was calling players.”...

Pronger said that Mark Sauer, then president of the St. Louis Blues, took him and other Blues players to lunch and tried to persuade them to accept the NHL’s proposal. “They were hard-line in St. Louis,” Pronger said. “He was saying, ‘You need to take this deal and like it.’”

Pronger said he believes that lunch took place earlier than the other calls to players, more like November or December, but said he was not receptive to what he heard. “I wasn’t really paying attention after a while,” he said. “It was a one-way conversation.”

This is interesting because later on we read:

But in the days after Roenick’s interview, there were more news reports that a group of players led by Iginla and Pronger had met with management to talk about a salary cap, going around Goodenow and the union’s public position. “I got linked to this supposed coup of Bob Goodenow,” Pronger said, adding that the reports were false. “There was a lot of inaccurate journalism. I don’t think there was a group. A group of players saying, ‘Bob, you have to go [to a salary cap].’”

Now how does one reconcile the two statements? I added emphasis here because that's the part in dispute though there really isn't any real dispute. Management DID meet with the players about accepting a salary cap. The players involved admit as much and go on further to say that those talks were "one-sided" and didn't get very far.

Here we have something that was spun and people are trying to distort their actions to counter the spin. But the fact remains, management DID meet with the players about accepting a salary cap.

Sneaky on the part of the owners and their spin doctors? You bet. Categorically false? Hardly. The Players got snookered on that one.

Roenick attended a union meeting in Toronto on March 1 to explain why he had said what he said on ESPN.

“The last union meeting in Toronto after I said we should come out with a cap, there was a lot of yelling and screaming,” Roenick said last month. At that March 1, 2005, meeting, there were players on both sides of the cap issue.

“It was not a total united front,” Roenick said.

Good 'ol JR. now this comes as surprise because we were earlier told:

In many ways, though, the NHLPA was stronger than other sports unions going into a work stoppage, because about half of its 750 members were hired to play professional hockey in Europe.

“We had about 400 players (me here, 400 is half of 750? Is there some sort of odd Canadian conversion rate thing going on here? ) playing in Europe who were out of sight, out of mind,” Larmer said. “We had another 150 players who were looking forward to taking a year and a half off.”

Then there was a small but vocal group making lots of calls to the union office. “There were about 50 players who wanted to know what was going on and wanted to speed it up,” Larmer said. (me again, so, 400+150+50= 700. What about the 50 unaccounted players? or is the 750 number flat out wrong because we're talking about only 25 players per team here.)

So 50 players were able to sow that kind of discontent that quickly?

Though remember, those 400 players in Europe were mostly North American. They were playing in a strange land, in a strange culture, for far less $$$$$ than they were making in North America.

Furthermore, those players in Europe were suffering the indignity of having to carry their own equipment bags around. Something not even the robber-baron NHL Owners make them suffer through.

Something tells me that the guys in Europe weren't exactly happy with their circumstances on a number of different levels.

On March 22 the NHLPA’s executive committee held what was supposed to be a secret, four-day meeting in Pebble Beach, Calif., to strategize, but word leaked out.

The Toronto Star, in a story later that year, reported that Goodenow’s fate was sealed at that meeting “when it is believed union president Trevor Linden, in effect, ordered Goodenow to either find a resolution that included a cap or remove himself from the negotiating process.”

An agent told SportsBusiness Journal that Goodenow told the executive committee he wanted to wait the owners out until January 2006, but that the executive committee wasn’t willing to do that. “They reversed Bob,” the agent said.

Which of course is their right. What people keep forgetting is that Goodenow works for the players. If the players were willing to accept a Salary Cap, then it is Goodenow's job to go out and get that deal. Much like the owners could have deep-sixed Bettman at any point in time had they chosen to do so.

Remember that first quote? The executive board and the executive committee have the power to run the union.

The question that still needs to be asked here is very simple, if the players were not willing to accept a deal with a salary cap. Why did the NHLPA membership vote to ratify the deal?

Now how did Goodenow end up on the outside looking in? Well, first of all, the players put him there. Secondly you see all throughout that article how Goodenow is a considered a bully and a strong personality. Goodenow's position against taking a salary cap was well known. If the players (the ones who would be most affected by a salary cap) were willing to accept a cap, why keep as your point man a strong personality adamantly opposed to it?

Quite frankly, it makes no sense.

This article does not clear up or absolve questions surrounding the dismissal of Bob Goodenow. If Goodenow was told he was going to be fired and submitted a resignation before that firing could be properly executed, Goodenow could be as they say "so out of luck." But that's a mess independent of the whole issue surrounding the completion of the CBA. If the players were united in not wanting a salary cap, there's no way it would have been ratified by the players.

Give the owners credit, they broke the back of the union by their resolve to see a cap installed at whatever the cost. Lost in this timeline is the pointing out just over one month after Bettman canceled the 2004-2005 season that the players made the decision to fully accept a salary cap.

What this article also leaves out were the threats made by the owners to cancel the 2005-2006 season sooner than they waited to cancel the 2004-2005 season. That also had to have moved players to "take whatever they could get."

Finally, I have to say that I am glad Goodenow is gone. I am very disappointed that Gary Bettman hasn't suffered the same fate because the two prime faces of the NHL Lockout should have never survived no matter who won. But that's another rant for another day. What does upset me though is that there are players who in lieu of agreeing to a salary cap not only got a salary floor (which no other capped pro sports league has BTW) and a minimum salary of $450,000. Throw in the earlier free agency ages and I fail to see just how bad this deal is for the players. I respect that these guys only have a small window of opportunity to capitalize on their talents. But the revenues of the NHL do not justify their salary demands.