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[Mowich]

DAVID SHOALTS
NHL hockey on verge of being frozen out until new year

DAVID SHOALTS
The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Aug. 09 2012, 6:42 PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Aug. 10 2012, 7:11 AM EDT


Now that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has ripped the scales of optimism from too many eyes, the only question is: How long will the lockout be?

Will it wipe out an entire season like the owners did in 2004-05 to get the salary-cap system they now say is impossible to work under? Or will the players and owners get a new collective agreement in time to save the Winter Classic on Jan. 1, the event that kicks off the NHL's U.S. television coverage and mega-millions payout from NBC?

Either unpalatable outcome is possible. The players and owners are oceans apart on the key, and perhaps only, issue - whether the money needed to close the gap between the league's rich and not-so-rich teams has to come out of the players' pockets or through revenue sharing.

When Bettman left a short negotiating session with the players in New York on Thursday to say the owners will not open the season without a new collective agreement, it only underscored what has been clear for some time - there will be a lockout when the current collective agreement expires on Sept. 15. That leaves 37 days to cut a deal, which is not enough time considering how far the sides are apart.

"There's a meaningful gulf there," said Donald Fehr, executive director of the NHL Players' Association.

The only surprise is that so many people connected to the NHL - media, players, coaches executives - were optimistic the players and owners could settle their differences by the time the season is supposed to start in early October.

Count Los Angeles Kings defenceman Willie Mitchell among them. Of the owners' first offer, he said: "I don't see it as a legitimate proposal. It's just a non-starter." He's also suspicious of the owners' reporting of their hockey-related revenue (HRR).

However, he still thinks a deal can be reached by Sept. 15, although he admits he is not directly involved in the talks.

"Yeah, I think so," Mitchell said. "Players have a lot to lose, the public has a lot to lose, and the ownership have a lot to lose. It's just all posturing right now."

Bettman stripped away that optimism on Thursday. This goes beyond posturing.

Because the NHL bounced back with seven consecutive years of revenue growth after wiping out an entire season, many owners were convinced they can do it again. With the players better educated this time around and more determined, it is not a recipe for a full season.

The owners' first offer, in which they demanded a 24-per-cent cut in player salaries, is simply a starting position in the negotiations. However, this is far worse than just a low-ball opening shot. In addition to cutting the players' share of revenue to 46 per cent from 57 per cent, the owners also want to redefine the HRR so there is much less in the pot, which would reduce the players' share to 43 per cent.

That's a $450-million (all currency U.S.) haircut from the $1.88-billion the players received from the NHL's preliminary estimate of its $3.3-billion in HRR from the 2011-12 season. The owners also want to increase the eligibility for free agency to 10 years, putting it beyond the reach of the average NHL player, to eliminate salary arbitration and impose five-year limits on player contracts.

It would be folly to think these positions are token gestures by Bettman to move the dial on the players' percentage of the pot. The commissioner is a tough negotiator. No position is given up easily.

When the players make their first major counterproposal on Tuesday, you can expect the owners to dismiss it quickly.

Finally, the optimists also like to say no one, especially the owners, wants a lockout to cost the Winter Classic on Jan. 1. This is now one of the most important events on the NHL calendar, both from a revenue and public-relations standpoint, so the owners will settle in time to save it.

But if you are Fehr and the players, and the owners refuse to bend on revenue sharing, then it would only make sense to stay out as Jan. 1 approaches.

No one should count on seeing any NHL games before the New Year.

With a report from David Ebner

Meanwhile, our Canadian Juniors are over in Russia for the Summit series. The Canadians won 3 to 2 yesterday but are down 2 goals in the 3rd period today.

GO, CANADA, GO! :canada:


RUSSIA EVENS JUNIOR HOCKEY CHALLENGE WITH WIN OVER CANADA

YAROSLAVL, Russia - The Canada-Russia junior hockey challenge moves to Halifax tied one game apiece after Kirill Kapustin's hat trick gave Russia a 6-3 win.


Anton Zlobin and Kapustin both scored on power plays early in the second period of the penalty-filled game.


Ty Rattie brought Canada within one with his own power-play goal but Kapustin scored his second short-handed to make it 3-1.


Morgan Reilly tipped it in to bring Canada within one in the third but about two minutes later Maxim Shalunov extended Russia's lead.


Kapustin made it 5-2 with his third goal but Canada's Ryan Strome replied, scoring less than a minute later.


Shalunov scored an empty netter to seal the win as the series moves to Halifax Monday and Tuesday.

Russia evens junior hockey challenge with win over Canada

Our guys need to stay out of the penalty box and get more physical - the Russians were very physical and will bring that with them to Hamilton. Get physical guys and play clean.

GO, CANADIAN JUNIORS..........................ROCK ON GUYS! :canada:

 

[JLM]

I was thinking of starting a thread titled "Bettman is an A$$hole". :lol:

 

[Mowich]

I was thinking of starting a thread titled "Bettman is an A$$hole". :lol:

LOL! I'll be sure to post a bon mot or two, JLM. :lol:

 

[JLM]

LOL! I'll be sure to post a bon mot or two, JLM. :lol:

tres bien! :lol:

 

[spaminator]

they should lock out bettman.

can trades, signings, etc. be made during a lockout?

 

[Mowich]

they should lock out bettman.

:thumbright:

can trades, signings, etc. be made during a lockout?

Don't know about trades, etc spam.........will go looking for an answer.

:thumbright:



Don't know about trades, etc spam.........will go looking for an answer.

I give up.............can't find the answer. Hopefully JLM or talloola know. Sorry.

 

[talloola]

They should be happy to split the revenue 50/50 just like the NBA and I think the NFL, and they
probably will end up doing that, but if the league can get away from taking more than that they
certainly will.

This type of political posturing is getting very tiring, there is a place that will be fair to both
sides, just get to it quickly, and stop all of this child's play, just politics.

The NHL bragged all last season about their huge revenue numbers, bettman bragged on occasions how
successful the NHL is, with that leering smile on his face, now he isn't doing that, hmmmmm, guess
its the pokerface now.

I can't be bothered to pay any attention to anything they say, i'll just wait till someone drops the
puck, whenever it is, then I will look up from the more important things I will be doing, and hockey
will be number one for me again.

 

[spaminator]

:thumbright:



Don't know about trades, etc spam.........will go looking for an answer.





I give up.............can't find the answer. Hopefully JLM or talloola know. Sorry.

[/FONT][/FONT]

no probs. thanks for checking.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

With the NFL lockout, nothing could be done. No releases, no trades. No contact between players and coaches. When they started up again, they did 4 months of that in 2 weeks.

 

[talloola]

they should lock out bettman.

can trades, signings, etc. be made during a lockout?

I would imagine 'not' because all trades and signings have to be approved by
the NHL before they are confirmed and finalized, so perhaps trades could be
agreed on 'verbally', but would have to wait till they are playing again.

Players can go and play elsewhere as long as they get a special agreement
from wherever they are playing that they can leave as soon as their
NHL lockout is over.

AHL will be up and running, so lots of players will be assigned to that
league from their NHL teams, but of course there is a limit to the numbers
allowed 'in' the AHL, as they have their own rules about signing players,
and what players are eligable to play in that league.

 

[talloola]

congrats to 'canada' for winning the 'ivan hlinka' , 'under 18', hockey tournament.

 

[Kreskin]

Talloola, whenever I see that you've posted in the NHL thread I enter the thread hoping it's a Luongo trade announcement.

 

[#juan]

Luongo apparently turned down a trade to Toronto. Does Florida need a goalie?

 

[talloola]

Talloola, whenever I see that you've posted in the NHL thread I enter the thread hoping it's a Luongo trade announcement.

I think, if there was no negotiations going on for NHLPA and NHL stuff we probably would have heard
something, seems teams are waiting to see outcome first.

Luongo apparently turned down a trade to Toronto. Does Florida need a goalie?

I haven't heard that news, is it legit, yeah florida does need a goalie, rumours have been, toronto, chicago
and florida for luongo, but its always just media runours, so can't rely on that as reality because
unless news comes directly from a team spokesman, one never knows.

 

[Mowich]

congrats to 'canada' for winning the 'ivan hlinka' , 'under 18', hockey tournament.

Had a thread on this but it got buried............good on you for posting the win, talloola. 17 wins for Canada in the 22 year history of the tourney...........under 18 hockey supremacy or what!!!

And, the U-18 Women beat the U.S. in a shoot-out to take the game 5 to 4.

Congratulations to both teams. :canada:

 

[Mowich]

NHL’s tactics in labour talks meant to hurt players

Scott Stinson | Aug 18, 2012 8:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 18, 2012 2:02 PM ET


When NHL commissioner Gary Bettman flatly dismissed the contract proposal of the league’s players’ association this week, he did so by airily noting that the players had failed to recognize “the economics in our world,” referring specifically to “what recently happened with the NFL and the NBA.”

The implication was that players in those other leagues came to understand that their economics were out of whack, and that they helped team owners put their leagues on more sound footing. Such selfless heroes those guys were, not like these obstinate hockey players.

What happened, actually, in each of those leagues was rather more simple: the players took a giant salary haircut, and the owners were left with a much larger pot of money for themselves.

The leagues prefer not to couch it in these terms. There is talk of competitive balance, and the importance of making sure fans in all cities have the chance to support a hometown winner. Consider what NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver had to say in late November, when the five-month lockout in that league was ended with a new collective agreement: “It will largely prevent the high-spending teams from competing in the free-agency market in the way they’ve been able to in the past.” He said the deal “will give fans in every community hope that their team can compete for the championship.”

The events of the past few months have since shown Silver’s words to be a fat load of hooey. The high-spending Los Angeles Lakers signed two-time MVP Steve Nash on the free-agent market, then engineered a four-team trade that landed them the game’s most dominant centre in Dwight Howard. The high-spending Brooklyn Nets signed all-star guard Deron Williams to a mega-contract, traded for the enormous contract of guard Joe Johnson, and came close to landing Howard themselves. The defending champion Miami Heat made themselves better by signing free-agent shooter Ray Allen. Talent, in other words, continues to flow to a handful of teams. The weak sisters are still the weak sisters.

They are richer for it, though, since the NBA lockout’s real legacy was in forcing the players to accept something close to 50% of league revenues, where under the previous deal they received 57%. Depending on whose numbers you believe, this put between US$2-billion and US$3-billion of additional money in owners’ hands over the life of the deal.

In the NFL, which ended a lockout last summer, players had their share of revenue slashed, from about 50% to 47%, plus the owners wrangled a new system that directed more than US$1-billion out of the revenue pool off the top.

In both leagues, the owners succeeded by taking hard lines, making the players — who have precious little time to earn their money before their careers enter the downside — sweat just enough that they were willing to accept deals that made them bleed rather than face the prospect of an entire missed season.

So, when NHLPA boss Donald Fehr said this week that the NHL was working from a “playbook” that would use a lockout as leveraging tactic in negotiations, he was exactly right. The NBA missed a couple of months, squeezed most of a season into a truncated schedule, and had zero pushback from fans once the games began. There’s your playbook right there.

It is true that, as Bettman often says, the NHL has some problems. According to valuations produced by Forbes magazine last fall, more than half the teams in the league — 18 of 30 — lost money in 2011. But the magazine also found that franchise values are at an all-time high and revenues are increasing by more than 5% annually, to more than $100-million per team on average, thanks to increased television ratings, online viewership and, significantly, the strong Canadian dollar.

And the team-by-team numbers show pretty starkly that the league does not have anything approaching a revenue problem, it has a revenue-disparity problem — one that, because player salaries are coupled to total revenues, forces low-revenue teams to pay more than they can afford.

Despite that US$103-million average revenue figure, for example, only 13 of 30 teams, according to Forbes, made more than US$100-million in revenue last year. At the top end, the Toronto Maple Leafs made US$193-million, the New York Rangers made US$169-million and the Montreal Canadiens pulled in US$165-million. At the other end of the ledger were the New York Islanders with revenue of US$63-million and the Phoenix Coyotes with US$70-million. Not surprisingly, the Leafs, Rangers and Canadiens were the three most profitable teams in the league, while the Islanders and Coyotes were among the least profitable teams. (The Coyotes lost an estimated US$24.4-million, Forbes says, more than US$10-million in losses than the next closest team, Columbus.)

How much do the revenues of the high-end teams dwarf those at the other end? The NHLPA’s proposal suggests the league could solve all of its economic worries by simply redistributing wealth from the rich teams to the poor. The union has a point. Toronto and Montreal had a combined operating income last year of almost US$129-million. The combined operating losses of all those 18 money-losing teams: US$126-million.

When Bettman and his allies insist that the league has financial difficulties, what he really means is that a handful of teams bleed money like stuck pigs. Two teams, Phoenix and Columbus, account for almost a third of league losses all on their own. Then there is the evidence of the past summer that suggests even owners from some of the small, low-revenue markets are a hell of a long way from the poor house. Carolina, which lost money last year, signed Jordan Staal to a US$60-million contract extension and gave Alexander Semin a one-year, US$6.7-million deal. Nashville, which lost money, matched Philadelphia’s 14-year, US$110-million bid for Shea Weber. Minnesota, which lost money, gave Ryan Suter and Zach Parise a combinedUS $196-million. These are not the moves of business entities that are teetering on the edge of financial ruin.

The question of what will break the impasse, most likely, will come down to resolve. Every sports lockout involves a group of wealthy owners who did not become wealthy owners by sticking up for one another and looking out for the little guy. These are highly self-interested people. How much patience will the owners of the high-value franchises have for missing games when the only teams suffering under the current system are a smattering of franchises in lousy markets? On the player side, will they stick to their counter-proposal or be cowed if they start missing paycheques?

Fehr, on a conference call with reporters on Friday, allowed that “no players would like to miss games.” But he also said the players are prepared to do so. They gave up an awful lot in the last lockout, he noted, and the owners’ current demands, including a reduction of the players’ share of revenues from 57% to 43%, would see them give all that up again, and more.

“They understand what that means,” he said.

It means the NHL is trying to lean on them. Grind concessions out of them, especially once the missed games begin. In other leagues, the tactic has produced a win.

It’s right there in the playbook.

NHL’s tactics in labour talks meant to hurt players | NHL | Sports | National Post

 

[talloola]

for the first week or so that the NHL has been back, the turn-out is very high, and there has been record attendances for many teams, so all is well, everyone is happy to have their hockey back, and
the events of the past 3 months or so are behind all of us.

hockey has started in high gear. chicago has had the best start, won tonight over st. louis to
record 3 straight wins.
patrick kane and others who played in europe are in top playing condition and it really shows, he
was flying tonight and looks great.

the schedule is very heavy with only 48 games stuffed into a short period, so there is certainly no
shortage of games to watch.

Ottawa, st. louis, pittsburg, chicago, san jose, look very strong out of the chute, but that could
change rapidly with all of the games ahead.

Mike Gillis did mention today that he does 'possibly' have a deal for luongo in the works, would not
mention the team involved, but did say that the team needs to move an existing player on their team
before the deal can go through, so, we'll see in the next few days if this is going to fly or not.
If he can bring in a player who can strengthen that second line, center position it will certainly
help.



enjoy

 

[wulfie68]

In a short season, no one can afford a sustained losing streak. Its not crippling with the buffers built into an 82 game season, but those buffers disappear in 48. The other thing being talked about too, and I agree, is the need to pace teams (in terms of the need for practice schedules on off days to be light) and especially goaltenders: goalies that played high % of their games for teams can't play the same rate because they don't have the recovery time between games, given the number of back-to-back games and travel requirements. This will probably translate into an advantage to the eastern conference this year, because of the less onerous travel schedule, while a team like the Jets is probably going to suffer...

 

[JLM]

I think Bettman should have taken a few hours to attend to business and less about greed. Winnipeg should have been moved in to the West during those 3 months and Nashville moved to the East. Winnipeg has a formidable if not impossible schedule.

 

[talloola]

In a short season, no one can afford a sustained losing streak. Its not crippling with the buffers built into an 82 game season, but those buffers disappear in 48. The other thing being talked about too, and I agree, is the need to pace teams (in terms of the need for practice schedules on off days to be light) and especially goaltenders: goalies that played high % of their games for teams can't play the same rate because they don't have the recovery time between games, given the number of back-to-back games and travel requirements. This will probably translate into an advantage to the eastern conference this year, because of the less onerous travel schedule, while a team like the Jets is probably going to suffer...

yeah, I don't think teams are practicing much at all, with exception to the 3 day off schedule canucks
just had, but those won't happen often for anyone.

the few first games happening are just like the pre season games played before each season, and once
the 'rusty' players get their legs under them, and get into game shape, the games will be better, and
have good flow, with 'all' players at a higher level of fitness.

Winnipeg will be in the western conference next season, for whatever reason, that problem couldn't be ironed
for this season, and of course the lockout had a lot to do with that.
They will survive just like canucks survive their gruelling schedules every year.