haroldsnepsts

In your business, do the people who hired you typically modify your contract to pay you 10-20% less while expecting you to do the same amount of work? Because I'm guessing you're talking about contract modifications to add or reduce work based on the changing needs of who hired you. Which also involves a proportionate increase or decrease in pay.

But that's a rhetorical question posed by the author in the article, not to Alzner. It could mean that. There's really no context so who knows. But I think all the players are aware that under any new CBA the conditions will be less favorable than what they have right now. The league is trying to avoid saying the word "rollback" but to cut salaries to the degree they want, they're gonna need a rollback because of the asinine contracts the owners handed out right before the CBA expired. Or create some luxury tax for going over the tax, which is never gonna happen. It seems like a decent compromise is just to let the players percentage of revenue decrease in a stepped way over the length of the CBA, which is pretty much a version of what the union proposed. Both sides just need to agree on the eventual percentage. Well, first they need to agree on what constitutes HRR. Even with the stepped down decrease, it seems like both sides could end up making more money overall because it would bring a relatively quick end to the lockout.

I dont know that it's necessarily admitting defeat. From their first proposal, the players never asked for anything more than what they have right now. They've just been trying to lose less. So from day one they knew any deal wasn't going to be as good as the last CBA. Fehr himself has said as much.

The Board of Governors are who made that change, but I don't know what percentage of the vote they needed to do that. Jeremy Jacobs, the Bruins owner, is the head of the board of governors. He is a hardliner so it's not surprising he would be in favor of Bettman reducing the players share as much as possible, even if it means lockout.

When I found out how hard it is to overrule Bettman, it was both depressing and explained a lot about the last lockout. We've seen how idiotic some of these owners can be. And now Gary only needs 8 not to vote against him. I've seen several references to what a hardliner Jeremy Jacobs (owner of the Bruins) is and how much influence he has. A friend of mine is from Boston and said fans hate him. They even booed him when he was announced during their Cup win. Among ownership there's got to be more reasonable, intelligent voices in the group, but are there 24 of them? Probably not. EDIT: And I just remembered that the league owns the coyotes, so Bettman probably gets one of those 30 votes himself. So he might only need 7 owners to support him.

While it's not surprising that the owners don't want to play out the season without a CBA, Fehr is exactly right that under Bettman's reign lockout has not been a last resort but is the basis of his negotiating strategy. Especially considering Bettman got the rules changed to make it even harder to overrule him, so compromise on the owners side is even less likely. Given the amount of concessions they want from the players, ownership had to know it would require locking the players out before they'd ever agree to them. This lockout wasn't the unfortunate result of unexpected circumstances, it was almost certainly something ownership prepared for.

By my count we've lost 1,780 games due to Bettman's lockouts. That beats MLB, NBA and NFL by a longshot. The sad part is we're still counting. That number is going to get even higher.

I think unfollowing on Twitter is a symbolic gesture. At this point any large protest would be good. But overall I agree. The important part though is to let the owners know you won't be spending money on their franchise. By phonecall, email, letter whatever. Make the clear threat and then follow up on it. I'd even list the all the things you've spent money on in the past. All the red wings merchandise, tickets to games, NHL package on cable, beer, parking. Anything you can think of that would put money in Mr. I's pocket.

It's depressing me hearing about Datsyuk playing. He's 34 years old and doesn't have a lot of seasons left, certainly not at top level. Every game missed is a big deal at this point in his career.

from NHL.com There was nothing about this that was necessary.

An NHL executive met with sponsors yesterday. http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=406703 That's a point of pressure on the ownership side I hadn't really thought about. Hopefully the sponsors are getting upset at this completely unnecessary lockout. And even if the season does resume, the league could potentially lose revenue because the sponsors will have reallocated it to other things.

I've already said several times I'm through having this conversation with you. All you need to do is go back through this thread to see how the conversation derails time and time again as it comes to its inevitable end. If you need more evidence of what a pointless feedback loop this discussion is, revisit this post from the previous lockout thread (copied below) where you made the same accusation against me and then apologized when shown you were wrong. If you continue baiting me with sarcastic comments like the one above, however, it will end with you getting a vacation. http://www.letsgowin...80#entry2326246 I'll make it easy for you. Here's a few excerpts from just the last few pages of the thread. You even quoted this post: Your post right below it: As promised, I stand corrected.

I don't really understand the fixation on the union not meeting months ago, other than it's really the only thing to try and blame just them for so far. The union not wanting to meet last season is bad on them and they should be blamed, but the owners locking the players out and not being willing to negotiate this season is ok and makes sense? We're 9 days out from the what was supposed to be the start of the regular season and there's no movement on either side. Any day now they'll start to announce the cancellation of games. I don't know what people think would've happened had they started meeting in January. Bettman even said he wasn't worried about the timetable back then. Right now they still can't even agree on what constitutes HRR. It's not about lack of time. It's not just about meeting with Daly and Bettman. Fehr was a relatively new president of the union and I'm guessing wanted to meet with a lot of the players, get a feel for where they stand on issues and also inform them of how he saw things. That's a little harder to do with hundreds of players while the season is going on than it is 30 owners. In a perfect world, yes they would've started meeting in January and had a deal hashed out this summer. I honestly (and naively) thought this would go relatively painlessly given the massive increase in revenue since the last CBA. But the two sides are so monumentally far apart right now that it's looking like the only way a deal will be made is to play chicken with this season and see who gives first.

The KHL makes it sound like a done deal. Here's the info posted on the KHL website:

Pretty good piece from Lebrun on the topic. Like most knowledgeable hockey fans, he's able to come up with a reasonable compromise that should be painfully obvious to the owners and union. http://espn.go.com/blog/nhl/post/_/id/19563/its-groundhog-day-in-cba-negotiations He also calls out hardline owner Jeremy Jacobs. I hadn't really heard much about him, but what I found doesn't sound good, especially given Bettman only needing 8 owners on his side. Moderate owners have no voice. http://espn.go.com/n...amics-different http://bleacherrepor...are-bad-for-nhl

Bob McKenzie's twitter today: Dreger: Sure you do Bill, sure you do... From ESPN: http://espn.go.com/n...rly-encouraging Bring in the mediator now please. And hope that he or she is a hockey fan. It still sounds like both sides can't even agree on what constitutes HRR, or in other words, they can't even agree on the pot they're trying to split up. Meanwhile fans are left without one to piss in.

The problem is that they're not necessarily interested in what's fair. As commissioner of the NHL and steward of the league, I'd hope that Bettman would act more in that capacity. Taking into consideration the best long term interest of the NHL as well as the owners' wishes, but he seems to be more hard line than the owners. Every CBA negotiation under his reign has resulted in a lockout, and as I mentioned earlier, in 1995 the lockout ended because the owners overruled Bettman and made a deal that salvaged the season. After that he got the rules change so he only needs the support of 8 owners to keep from being overruled again. With that kind of power there's a lot less chance of owners conceding anything.

Wow, they met a whole two hours? They must be exhausted. I think what Daly means by compromise is "agree to our ridiculous demands." Again, it looks like the union should have used removal of the salary cap as a starting point so they could "compromise" to where they're at now, which is a reasonable place from which to negotiate. It's a waiting game to see who breaks first. Start canceling the regular season.

even though the meeting may not directly address the core economic issues, sorting out exactly what constitutes Hockey Related Revenue is obviously critical to negotiating the percentages of it. Bettman already tried to pull a fast one by reducing the players share of HRR while also reducing what constitutes HRR. Now that he's been called out on it, it's nice that they're actually going to define what it is they're trying to divide between the two sides. Can't they just treat it like a cookie and do the old parent trick where one kid gets to split it into two pieces and the other gets to pick which piece they get? That process is elegantly simple in dividing something equitably.

I think you could still get a good handle on what's going on by just following guys like Dreger and McKenzie. It sounds like there's an existing twitter account that's basically trying to do the same thing. https://twitter.com/UnfollowNHLSept

Here's a somewhat dry but pretty good explanation of how Hockey Related Revenue makes things more complicated than they seem. It's not as simple as figuring out how much total revenue was generated and giving the players 57% of it. The players are already getting a reduced share. http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/opinion/2012/09/making-sense-of-hockey-related-revenue.html

Let's keep the discussion here about the negotiations without making it personal. Otherwise there will be edits/deletions/suspensions. Thanks.

It could be because after his '95 lockout, Bettman got the voting rules changed so it took three quarters of the owners to overrule him (23 out of 30), instead of the more than half that overruled him in 1995. If he has the support of 8 owners, there's no overruling him. Why cast a vote against something when you know it will only burn bridges with other owners and the commissioner, but won't actually accomplish anything? Bettman has already shown how vindictive he can be with his own ownership. A few years back the Rangers didn't want the league to run their team website and filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NHL. Bettman countersued and threatened punishment ranging from fining the franchise, suspending it, or even forcing ownership to sell it. After the '95 lockout resulted in salvaging a half season of hockey because the owners overruled him, Bettman managed to consolidate his power while squelching dissent, being able to fine the owners up to $1 million for divulging internal league matters. We saw what the Red Wings just got hit with because of Jimmy D's comments. http://www.nytimes.c...rcer.html?_r=2

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=406365 Great, so they're still trying to agree on what exactly happened during the last CBA? And they're still not even working with a fixed definition of HRR, which is ridiculous. How can you negotiate divvying up the pot when you haven't even determined how big the pot is? The league's position still appears to be that they're waiting for a counterproposal from the union with "meaningful" concessions, in response to the league's offer before the deadline. Though Bettman made quiet clear that proposal was off the table after the deadline, so I'm confused. Is the league saying that offer is still on the table? Or are they waiting for the union to respond to a proposal that's no longer valid?

Fehr made that exact point about Daly's claim it's the union's turn. It's just part of the public relations battle to make it look like the players are the one holding things up here.