The NHL Lockout...does anyone REALLY CARE?

[Matt White]

I knew a guy who will have been dead 17 years in march. He told me I wouldn't see the LIONS win a superbowl as long as FORD owned the team. The guy sounds like a prophet now!

[fenway5150]

I really don't care all that much unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I can remember looking forward to watching The Bruins play on a Saturday afternoon when I was a kid. My older brother was and is a huge fan and when they made the playoffs it was the biggest thing going at our house. Nowadays, though, it just doesn't capture my attention like the NFL does. I can watch the NFL playoffs regardless of whether my team is in it or not. It's not that way with hockey. Too many teams could be the reason...not good marketing another. I've tried to get back in it in recent years but couldn't.

[fenway5150]

Originally posted by Matt White
Just blast the Lions. You'll die at 95 and they STILL won't have won another playoff game.

Take it from a Red Sox fan....never say never.

[ALinChainz]

NHL talks to resume in hopes of saving season

By IRA PODELL, AP Sports Writer
January 25, 2005


NEW YORK (AP) -- The NHL and the players' association are taking another shot at saving the hockey season, which has been on the brink of cancellation for weeks.

A two-day meeting last week produced no tangible progress toward a labor agreement. The league and the union will meet again Wednesday in Toronto, but no formal proposal will be presented by the league.

Bill Daly, the NHL's chief legal officer, said Tuesday his negotiating team met this past weekend to discuss new ideas and address some issues raised by NHL Players' Association president Trevor Linden, the Vancouver Canucks center who initiated last week's meeting.

``Both parties agreed at last week's meeting that the time for formal proposals, at least during this process, may be behind us and we should try to sit at the table and discuss through the issues and maybe jointly craft something that might work,'' Daly told The Canadian Press. ``And that's what we're going to continue to do.''

The same group of negotiators that met in Chicago and Toronto will gather again: Linden, NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin and outside counsel John McCambridge as well as Daly, board of governors chairman Harley Hotchkiss and outside counsel Bob Batterman. Again, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow will sit this one out.

The lockout, which reached its 132nd day Tuesday, already has forced the cancellation of 699 of 1,230 regular-season games, plus the All-Star game.

No proposals have been made since early December, when the players offered a 24 percent rollback on all existing contracts as part of a luxury-tax and revenue-sharing system. The NHL turned that down and made a counterproposal five days later that was rejected in a matter of hours.

If the season is wiped out, the Stanley Cup wouldn't be awarded for the first time since 1919, when a flu epidemic canceled the final series between Seattle and Montreal. The NHL would then become the first major North American sports league to lose an entire season because of a labor dispute.

Optimism was expressed last Wednesday after the first day of meetings when Linden and Hotchkiss had a chance to talk one-on-one. The good feeling didn't carry over to the next day, though, and Linden reportedly told players in a recorded message on the players' Web site that the NHL was still insisting on a salary cap and that the season would likely be canceled.

Daly said he was surprised that Linden came away from the meetings with that opinion because the NHL felt that some progress was made. Both sides admitted that they were still far apart on the key issue.

The NHL wants the new deal to give clubs cost certainty -- a link between revenues and player costs. The union says that amounts to an unacceptable salary cap.

[Gmoney]

I am going to be so fuckin' pissed off when soccer goes on strike too!!!!

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Still unlikely IMO, but you're hearing about more and more players being optimistic....

We'll see, not holding my breath though....

[ALinChainz]

It would have to be fast.

They would have to be playing damn quick.

I don't see it happening.

[Bob_R]

NEW YORK (AP) -- Four meetings, three cities, and no deals. That sums up the past week in the NHL lockout.

Talks between the NHL and the players' association broke down again Thursday night, leaving the sides still far apart and with no plans to meet again.

``We continue to have significant philosophical differences,'' NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin said Thursday night. ``No meetings are scheduled and we will not make further comment at this time.''

With the season on the brink of being canceled, negotiations resumed late Thursday afternoon in New York. For the second straight day, both sides were tightlipped about what was discussed or accomplished.

``We're going to continue to keep quiet on the status and substance of negotiations,'' NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly told The Associated Press in an e-mail following the meeting.

Seven representatives from the league and the union met for five hours at an undisclosed location following a 5 1/2 -hour get-together a day earlier in Toronto. The small group format began last week when the sides sat down on consecutive days in Chicago and Toronto.

There was talk earlier in the day that the sides had left open the possibility of getting together again on Friday, but Daly told the AP that would not happen.

Taking commissioner Gary Bettman and union chief Bob Goodenow out of the negotiating mix for this period has apparently done nothing to soften either side.

The lockout reached its 134th day Thursday and has forced the cancellation of 721 of the 1,230 regular-season games plus the All-Star game. If an agreement isn't reached soon, the NHL will likely become the first North American sports league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute.

For the second time this week, rumors swirled that the NHL was prepared to make another proposal to the players' association. Daly declined comment Thursday afternoon.

No offers have been revealed since mid-December when the union invited the league back to negotiations with a proposal that featured a 24 percent rollback of all existing contracts and a luxury-tax system.

The league countered five days later with a salary-cap structure, a concept the NHL is insisting on and one the players' association says it will never accept. The NHL wants a direct link between player salaries and league revenues.

It was Vancouver center Trevor Linden who came up with the idea last week to talk with just six people in the room. Linden, the NHLPA president, invited Harley Hotchkiss -- the chairman of the board of governors to talks that started last Wednesday in Chicago and concluded the following day in Toronto. Hotchkiss missed the second meeting due to a funeral in Calgary.

The structure was successful in producing discussion, but it did nothing to close the gap in the philosophical differences.

New Jersey Devils president and general manager Lou Lamoriello joined Daly, Hotchkiss -- a part-owner of the Calgary Flames -- and outside counsel Bob Batterman on the NHL side in Toronto on Wednesday.

``I really don't have any comments,'' Lamoriello said in a phone interview from New Jersey on Thursday. ``When this process is on, I think the comments should come only from the people who are spokespeople.''

The players' association has kept its team of Linden, Saskin and outside counsel John McCambridge the same for all four small-group sessions.

So closely guarded are the smallest details from the league's latest round of talks with the players' association, that exactly what they've been talking about is anyone's guess.

The small-group format was created with the hope that the sides could find common ground that would lead to a new collective bargaining agreement.

So far, it hasn't worked.

[ALinChainz]

They had better start looking towards next season.

This season has to be shot by now.

The last time, they had settled on January 11 and had time for a 48 game schedule.

This season is toast.

[ALinChainz]

NHL labor talks break down again

By IRA PODELL, AP Sports Writer

January 28, 2005

NEW YORK (AP) -- Four meetings, three cities, and no deals. That sums up the past week in the NHL lockout.

Talks between the NHL and the players' association broke down again Thursday night, leaving the sides still far apart and with no plans to meet again.

``We continue to have significant philosophical differences,'' NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin said Thursday night. ``No meetings are scheduled and we will not make further comment at this time.''

With the season on the brink of being canceled, negotiations resumed late Thursday afternoon in New York. For the second straight day, both sides were tightlipped about what was discussed or accomplished.

``We're going to continue to keep quiet on the status and substance of negotiations,'' NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly told The Associated Press in an e-mail following the meeting.

Seven representatives from the league and the union met for five hours at an undisclosed location following a 5 1/2 -hour get-together a day earlier in Toronto. The small group format began last week when the sides sat down on consecutive days in Chicago and Toronto.

There was talk earlier in the day that the sides had left open the possibility of getting together again on Friday, but Daly told the AP that would not happen.

Taking commissioner Gary Bettman and union chief Bob Goodenow out of the negotiating mix for this period has apparently done nothing to soften either side.

The lockout reached its 134th day Thursday and has forced the cancellation of 721 of the 1,230 regular-season games plus the All-Star game. If an agreement isn't reached soon, the NHL will likely become the first North American sports league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute.

For the second time this week, rumors swirled that the NHL was prepared to make another proposal to the players' association. Daly declined comment Thursday afternoon.

No offers have been revealed since mid-December when the union invited the league back to negotiations with a proposal that featured a 24 percent rollback of all existing contracts and a luxury-tax system.

The league countered five days later with a salary-cap structure, a concept the NHL is insisting on and one the players' association says it will never accept. The NHL wants a direct link between player salaries and league revenues.

It was Vancouver center Trevor Linden who came up with the idea last week to talk with just six people in the room. Linden, the NHLPA president, invited Harley Hotchkiss -- the chairman of the board of governors to talks that started last Wednesday in Chicago and concluded the following day in Toronto. Hotchkiss missed the second meeting due to a funeral in Calgary.

The structure was successful in producing discussion, but it did nothing to close the gap in the philosophical differences.

New Jersey Devils president and general manager Lou Lamoriello joined Daly, Hotchkiss -- a part-owner of the Calgary Flames -- and outside counsel Bob Batterman on the NHL side in Toronto on Wednesday.

``I really don't have any comments,'' Lamoriello said in a phone interview from New Jersey on Thursday. ``When this process is on, I think the comments should come only from the people who are spokespeople.''

The players' association has kept its team of Linden, Saskin and outside counsel John McCambridge the same for all four small-group sessions.

So closely guarded are the smallest details from the league's latest round of talks with the players' association, that exactly what they've been talking about is anyone's guess.

The small-group format was created with the hope that the sides could find common ground that would lead to a new collective bargaining agreement.

So far, it hasn't worked.

[Lou]

I can't believe anyone seriously thought, after the December meetings broke down, there was going to be a season. And then Wayne Gretzky came out and said the lockout could head well into next year. Obviously, if it could head well into next year, he had already written off this year.

[Bob_R]

NHL players, owners separated by 54%




Until now, 54 was an infamous number in hockey circles, primarily because it reflected the mind-boggling number of years the Rangers went between their last two Stanley Cups.
As of Thursday night, that number took on a new meaning with potentially devastating consequences for the NHL. Owners' insistence that total annual player costs not exceed 54% of the league's hockey-related revenue has become their focal point of the philosophical divide with players.

And that divide has pushed this season to the verge of cancellation while imperiling next season and beyond.

NHL executive VP Bill Daly presented NHL Players Association representatives with a fairly comprehensive oral proposal for a new collective bargaining agreement Thursday night. However, despite its underlying complexity, the offer boiled down to the same straightforward principle that owners portray as vital to their economic survival and players insist they'll never accept:

The linkage of player salaries to a fixed percentage of league revenues.

After spending four hours meeting with Daly, Devils CEO Lou Lamoriello, Calgary part-owner and NHL Board of Governors chairman Harley Hotchkiss and an attorney Thursday night in New York, the players' three-man team returned to Toronto yesterday with no new talks scheduled. NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin, who accompanied Vancouver center and union president Trevor Linden to the meeting, had this to say after going over the league's proposal:

"We continue to have significant philosophical differences."

Facets of the proposal put forth by Daly could be viewed as compromises from previous ownership positions. The most notable was a hike in the individual team payroll caps from the $31 million originally floated to $42 million - and a mandated minimum team payroll of $32 million.

However, even if players were inclined to be encouraged by that, the overriding 54% umbrella darkened their mood. Because if enough of the NHL's 30 teams approached that $42 million payroll level in any season to drive total league player costs past that 54% cap, players would have to give back money.

Last season, for example, the NHL reported that its teams took in approximately $2.1 billion in hockey-related revenue. Fifty-four percent of that works out to an average payroll of $37.8 million per team.

Another feature of the NHL offer reportedly was a $6million annual cap on individual player salaries.

"I just want to know how they can change guaranteed contracts like mine and other people's," Rangers center Bobby Holik said yesterday. "Legally, I mean, not whether it's right or wrong."

Holik, who signed a five-year, $45 million contract with the Rangers two years ago, said there is a key difference between an owner-mandated cap and the 24% rollback on all current contracts that the NHLPA offered in December.

"We agreed to do that," Holik said. "If that's my sacrifice to get the deal done and for players who come after me for years to come, I'm willing to do that. But it's different if it's forced down your throat."

Saying he was only drawing his own conclusions, Holik reflected the opinion of many players who believed Thursday night's proposal was more about spin than concession. Of course, owners had the exact same view of the NHLPA's December proposal that would have produced little drag on salary escalation going forward.

"I can't speak for the PA or for the owners, just as an independent thinker myself," Holik said. "I think the PA made some great offers. And what comes to mind with this is that they're thinking it will look like they made an effort to get something done.

"Very likely I'm wrong and everybody is very sincere. But personal experience makes me skeptical. Maybe I've followed too much politics, where everything is PR."

[ALinChainz]

Not surprised by Holik's reaction.

No way in hell he should have gotten that contract anyway, that was the Rangers trying to buy their way out as usual.

He isn't that good.

[ALinChainz]

NHL czar forgets lessons of NBA cap

By Stephen A. Smith, Inquirer Columnist

In 1983, a time when the National Hockey League had no desire to emulate anything about the National Basketball Association, Gary Bettman was perceived as one with the potential to become like David Stern. As shrewd and astute a negotiator as they come, with the pedigree to be the quintessential nightmare for any players' union.


Back then, Bettman, along with Stern, the NBA commissioner, and Russ Granik, Stern's deputy, was in search of cost certainty, looking to stymie the huge increase in player salaries. As general counsel for the NBA, Bettman helped bring a soft salary-cap system and revenue sharing to professional sports, recognizing that it could one day lead to the collectively-bargained models that owners in both basketball and football enjoy today.


So what's wrong with Bettman now?


Stupidity? Stubbornness? Selective amnesia?


Pick one.


When you try to ram a hard salary cap down any professional sport's throat in this day and time, all of the above apply.


Let it be known the NHL players don't have all their screws in tight, either. Regardless of their aversion to any kind of salary cap - they're correct in feeling that way - they are not football or basketball players. The luxury of being contentious is not one they possess.


According to the NHL, the league generated a paltry $449 million in broadcasting revenue from both national and local contracts and new media in 2002-03, not billions. The Stanley Cup Finals on ABC last season averaged just a 2.6 rating, with the two games on ESPN registering just a 1.2 cable rating, according to Nielsen Media Research.


Considering those numbers and the supposedly $224 million in losses league-wide - combined with the NHL's assertion that 75 percent of team revenue was paid out in player costs - somebody had better slap some sense into Bob Goodenow, executive director of the National Hockey League Players Association and take a moment to throw two lines at him.


Right strategy.


Wrong sport.


Football, basketball and even baseball today are sports that people actually watch. For those sports, there are no collective sighs filled with apathy with the specter of a season's cancellation looming.


Yet, that doesn't negate Bettman's foolhardy approach, adopted from the moment he locked out the players in September. Nor is there any excuse for it, either, considering that he was pursued by NHL owners, specifically, because of his vast knowledge and experience as a principal negotiator in handling such circumstances.


NHL owners were aware that Bettman was hands-on in the development of the soft cap (see the NBA's Larry Bird exception) back in the 1980s. They knew that he was a principal architect of the NBA's revenue-sharing agreement back then.


Bettman's plan for cost certainty would need to be implemented in such a way that owners would still be allowed to spend to some degree, providing the players with some semblance of a free-market society.


Before the NBA's latest collective bargaining agreement, teams could exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own players. Other exceptions existed as well. And for more than a decade, before Stern was ever able to place a maximum limit on contracts and insert a rookie wage scale, a soft salary cap had been in place with little or no argument from the players.


You have to crawl before you walk. Though it may have cost the NBA 464 games during the lockout of 1998-99, no one can argue that the league has not done that.


Where Bettman is concerned, you can't stop yelling, "What is wrong with this man?"


After a 10-day strike in 1992, then a 103-day lockout in 1994-95 that eliminated 468 games and nearly half the season, the NHL now has its third stoppage in 13 years.


Guess who cares? Virtually nobody.


Fans are not salivating to see Bettman's product, mostly because of the lack of marquee players. There's a reason the league's average salary was $1.83 million last season instead of nearly $5 million, like its NBA brethren.


Bettman keeps talking about the league's state of mind, how he has the unanimous support of 30 league owners in his pursuit of a hard salary cap and revenue sharing, knowing full well that the Flyers, who love to spend, don't fall under that category.


Whom does Bettman think he's fooling?


Bettman keeps spinning and spinning, but he's going nowhere. Meanwhile, a sport that was close to shambles to begin with is now perilously close to extinction. Mainly because of a dogged commissioner who refuses to throw his players a bone.


A happy medium needs to be reached along the way. The Bettman of old would know this.


Evidently, money changes us all, not just the players we see and hear about.


Stephen A. Smith |


Lockout


Watch


136


TOTAL DAYS OF LOCKOUT


109


TOTAL DAYS


OF SEASON MISSED


11


GAMES LOST YESTERDAY


738


TOTAL GAMES MISSED


out of 1,230 regular-season games plus the 2005 All-Star Game.


Contact columnist Stephen A. Smith at 215-854-5846 or ssmith@phillynews.com.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=knight-stephenasmithnhlczarforge&prov=knight&type=lgns

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Interesting, Stephen A. on hockey....

Good article, though, hit the nail right on the head...