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The NHL can go eff off. I hope the players won't budge so the midget fatback Daily and the play it poor owners won't try this s*** again. Sent from my BlackBerry

no it doesn't. it might have high ratings for canda television but that's not where the big money tv deal is at. FYI, the lowest rated cup finals since the lockout was when ottawa (a candian team was involved). having canadian teams on tv doesn't automatically get you high tv ratings here in the states (which is where the big money tv contract is)

that's nonsense. the longer this goes on, the worse it will be for both sides

Anyone who'd scratch Cleary is probably also scratching their neck like Tyrone Biggums Ok this is a "line shuffling" thread, all I suggested was that Bert, Cleary, Sammy, Nyquist, and Brunner, are those guys that you can shuffle in and out of the top 6. Nyquist and Brunner are great but they are not going to play every game in the top 6 their first year, you'll see Sammy, Cleary, and Tuzzi in there when things need to be changed up. They are not the premier top 6ers but they aren't liabilities either.

It's how they got the franchise that makes it interesting: Chavez Ravine. Brooklyn lost the Dodgers and now have the Islanders. Sometimes, life really isn't fair.

Fair meaning well over what their employers are making and well over what they are really worth? Yeah sounds real fair. And Owners have Bettman in there to make sure that the players don't get too greedy and it seems to be working.

What the owners' camp is doing now is standing firm. Nothing inherently wrong with the behavior; it's wrong only if you believe they're standing firm behind an unreasonable demand. You can say the same for the PA, if you happen to think their demands are unreasonable. I don't, so I don't see any problem in their standing firm. (And it's hard to believe you really think they are either, when you posted an idea that was essentially the same as one of the PA proposals.) But you're also ignoring the fact that it isn't ping-pong. There's no rule anywhere that says proposals have to take turns. When Fehr didn't put forth a new proposal, what he was really saying was that the offer at that time was the same as the last offer made. The owner's were the ones who supposedly took their offer off the table, so really they were the ones not showing their hand at the time. Besides that, the owners gave the impression that they weren't willing to consider any offer that didn't include an immediate pay cut (and considering how they handled the PAs last offers, that's not hard to believe), so it's likely there was little point in making a new offer. Much like the current situation. There's nothing to talk about, and there won't be until someone loses (or sits on the brink of losing) enough to change their mind. (Hopefully that's tomorrow, but I won't hold my breath.) You can go either way (or neither), depending on which side (if any) you think is being reasonable. For clarity, when I say reasonable, I mean making an offer the other side should accept. The players' demands as I see them: No reduction in current contracts (or at least, no more than would be taken under the escrow rules of the prior CBA) No reduction in the actual dollar value of the current players' share: $1.883B + marginal growth to offset rising benefit costs. (at least not as long as revenue keeps growing at a decent rate. Subject to the same escrow as above.) Players' share not below 50% in any given season Token rise in players' share if revenue growth exceeds expectations (not so adamant on this I think, but the only proposal without it is the "#3", where it's mostly replaced by some player pay being outside the players' share) They certainly want contracting rules to stay as is, but they haven't talked much about that. I don't know that I would conclude that the lack of any provisions in their proposals is because they're actually proposing to keep them as is, or just leaving them to be negotiated later. The owners' demands: Immediate reduction of the players' share to 50% Players' share not more than 50% in any given season Pretty much across the board reduction in all player contracting rights They seem fairly adamant about "clarifying" the definition of HRR, which should be taken to mean redefining it in their favor (though it does also open the door to go the other way). Seems absurd that there's anything to clarify after seven years, but then again the PA didn't exercise their right to audit league accounting until Fehr came in (and found problems, league settled for paying players an additional $20M, who knows what the player's might have been shorted in the first 5 years since those years can no longer be audited) so I guess it really is needed. I don't think anything in the players' demands is unreasonable, unless it turns out they are totally inflexible on any contract rules. The only demand from the owners that I think is reasonable is the HRR, and only if they really mean 'mutual clarification'. Ironically, that one should be the most ridiculous, but sadly it seems truly necessary.

Agreed. Like has been pointed out in this thread a few time before though, its like the two sides in power in politics. Neither cares about the people whatsoever. Thats not the point. Its a power/money game.

This. I was so infuriated by Bill Daly's statement this morning suggesting that there was "nothing to discuss". The NHLPA presented 3 counter-proposals, and they were rejected within the course of an hour. I took the NHLPA about 2 days to put those together, which is really quite remarkable considering the size of the union and the fact that the NHL has been dictating the terms of this debate and creating artificial timelines. If the owners' position is that there's nothing to discuss unless the player's accept our exact proposal, that is NOT "negotiating". I can already sense fans starting to turn on the players a bit, and I really wish they would put this into some perspective. You can't simply say "Oh, these guys are all millionaires that get to play a game for a living, just give a little money back". Aside from the fact that most players are "thousand-aires", not millionaires, and may only get a few years a professional contract before they have to retire (or get hurt), it's easy for FANS to give back the players money that they've earned. Heck, fans would love the product just as much if Crosby made $200,000 a year, and the entry level salary was $25,000. But I'm sorry, that's just not realistic for the scope of this business and how much money these players (which ARE the "product") generate. This is a cash grab by the owners, who basically were caught betting against the future success of their own league when they agreed to the 57/43 split. The contracts already signed were limited once by the rules of the 2005 CBA (salary cap and other provisions), and are now being asked to be reduced AGAIN by the terms of a new CBA that didn't exist at the time the deals were signed. And, oh by the way, all of this is against the backdrop of a league that has made absurd amounts of money over that same period of time. A lockout is much harder on players than it is on owners. I find it comical that fans actually believe these players want to be wearing suits instead of playing the sport they dedicated their lives to AND earning lucrative contracts for so doing.

esteef

Not true. Bettman does not hate Crosby! esteef

True. But the devil was already in this fight. And he is a hateful, mean, vindictive devil who hates the players with a passion and would never negotiate in good faith no matter what the circumstances. So the players had no choice but to bring in a "devil" of their own to help even up the fight, lest their souls be devoured and they lose everything to the original devil, dark lord Bettman.

Make your arguments without name calling please. Thank you.And following the name calling up with a straw man fallacy doesn't help your case either. I'd take a commissioner who's lost under 800 to one who's closing in on 2,000 in less than twenty years every time. I don't expect the commissioner to be perfect. I just don't want lockout to be his first move, which it clearly is with Bettman. And actually it wouldn't surprise me if Illitch was saying exactly that. Did you see the video about the last lockout? Where they talk about Ilitch getting mad at other owners saying he's being punished because they don't know how to run a business? Then there's the articles that talk about how Bettman runs things as commissioner. Not sure if you saw those either, but these aren't ideas we're just inventing.

http://www.cbssports...to-labor-strife No, not like all other commissioners. And I'm not sure what a baseball strike has to do with a new NHL commissioner.

Nail. Head. The NHLPA brought in their own Bettman, and are *shocked* that it's come to this. They are like a couple of 3 year olds at a daycare, and a deal is never going to get done.