drwscc

Yeah! Let's take the advice of an internet warrior rather than teams of people with MBA's and extensive knowledge of the league, TV contracts, and business. frankgrimes says your team is unsustainable, Mr. Yzerman, so you're fired so Moosejaw Saskatchewan can have an NHL team.

That's because if they did that, the players have all the leverage. Fehr would just wait until right before the playoffs start, and then have the players strike. He's done it before, and there's no reason to think he wouldn't do it again. But, hey. I'm sure we'd all rather we miss the Stanley Cup Finals, rather than some games at the beginning of the season.

No, it still works. It's just a select group of 30 cattle ranchers that have Kobe cows. There are other ranches with angus cows, longhorns, etc, but in order to get a Kobe ranch, you have to be approved by the other ranchers. They can't have you going insane, selling your cows for pennies on the dollar, or making changes to the breed that will hurt the other ranchers.

Move the goalposts again there, cheif. Jim Balsille has nothing to do with the lockout. He's not an owner. Aren't you one of the ones saying the NHL is awesome right now with revenues and such? Sounds like a good thing to me.

My point is, you can't equate buying a team with buying anything else. It's not simply a money for product transaction. Whoever the team gets sold to, the rest of the owners HAVE to deal with that person forever, until they either sell the team or die. If you sell the team to a douchebag, he's going to vinegar up everything to do with the league, from CBA negotiations to giving out insane contracts, to rules changes, etc. That's why you have to be approved by the other owners. It's not simply a product. You have to be selective, or things can get ruined really fast for the other 29 ownership groups. It's not so much "Hey, he will give us x dollars, so let's sell" as it is "Hey, this guy is doing all kinds of wacky stuff that may or may not be illegal trying to get his hands on a team, and he has repeatedly told and showed us he doesn't give a crap about the rules or anything. Maybe if he gets a team he is going to screw up the good thing we have going."

Good comeback. Boy, I feel the sting on that one. Your arguments are so persuasive.

So, put something up for sale on craigslist. I'll respond to the ad, and make all kinds of hateful remarks in our correspondence, and then will show up to look at the item, right after taking a dump in your yard in front of you. I'll be loud and obnoxious, and make lots of obscene jokes. Then when you tell me you don't want me to buy your couch, I'll come back later when you're not home, and bribe someone else that lives there to sell me the couch without telling you. You'll come home and catch me in the act. Now will you sell me the couch? And guess what? If you sell me the couch, I'll be over at your house at least once a year, sometimes lots more, until I die or sell your couch to someone else, and you have no choice in the matter since you sold it to me. So, come on. Let's do some business. I have money, you have a couch. Let's get this thing done. Can't wait for our joint vacation over the summer, so we can talk about our couches. Hello?

A potential owner that pissed all over the exclusive club he was trying to join, and then was shocked when they didn't approve him buying the team. Getting BOG approval is part of the process, and he didn't get past that part. He didn't when he tried to buy the Pens and the Preds either.

So they're kobe beef, and not just regular cattle. Same thing applies. And no, the players will not all just go fill out the KHL and make it the best league in the world. You'll have your top 10% or so of the NHL players that can be slotted in in the KHL, SEL, and various other leagues. None of those leagues is on par with the NHL. The remaining 90% of the players in the NHL will have to either step down to the AHL, go play in Israel, North Africa, Japan, and places like that, or go get real jobs. Look, I am not completely on the owners's side. The way they handled this was nothing short of astonishing, and seems designed to have resulted in what we have. But the fact remains that they hold a majority of the cards. Sure, the Crosbys and the Malkins, and the Datsyuks can play wherever they want. But there are a lot more Patrick Eaveses and Tomas Kopeckys in the league that don't have those options available to them. This is also a pretty good breakdown of my thoughts on this too. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nhl--nhl-lockout--league--union-can-t-afford-to-pass-the-point-of-diminishing-returns.html

True, it kind of falls apart when you think that without the rancher, the cows live a nice long life, and without the owners, the players have to either play in lower leagues/go play overseas or go get real jobs.

Anyone who had the finances to do this would be on the same level as the current owners, and would want to see some return on their money. Unless it's something like The Toy with Richard Pryor, and like a Jim Balsille puts some teams together to play only for him. They could all bunk at his mansion, and he could hang out with them and do sleepovers and such.

1. Really? Sure seems like the owners own or control the teams and arenas, no? Kind of like a rancher owns and controls the ranch and everything on it. 2. People do shell out tons of money for leather goods, beef, dog treats, etc. i.e. the cows are the product too. Kind of like the players in the NHL. 3. This is true. It doesn't help the owners, and probably wasn't the best thing to say. However, Selanne and various other players bagging on the owners/Daly/Bettman is also stupid, and helps keep the sides at odds. But everyone applauds the players and Fehr, so what can you do?

Boy, people sure don't like to be reminded of the facts. Yes, the owners are the ranchers, and the players are the cattle. The club execs are like the ranch hands. Not sure why this riled everyone up. It's kind of obvious. Unless you own your own business, you are cattle too. It's the way the world works. Get a helmet.

Doubt it. Owners have much deeper pockets, and the teams are really just expensive toys for them. You can go without your toys for a while if you need to.

Sure it does. It's called the car gets repossessed, and the dealer gets to sell it again. There are ways to get out of destructive contracts, and people take them all the time. Buy more house than you can afford, and lose your job? Under your scenario, too bad, you're an indentured servant until you pay what you owe. I mean, why should the bank give you a break. You're the one who signed the contract. Noone put a gun to your head and made you get a house.

Jim, there's no need to get so upset here. Besides, if the league had let you buy Phoenix, you'd be on the other side of this argument now. A fair CBA does exist for all 30 teams, it's just a matter of getting there. The quickest thing to do would be substantially lower the cap floor. The floor, while a good idea in theory, just serves to drive up the cost of scrubs while cheap teams need to fill roster space to get to the floor. If it wasn't for Florida needing to get to the floor, does anyone seriously think Tomas Kopecky makes anywhere close to 3 mil per season? Your bottom dwelling teams are all offering these crazy contracts to the same scrubs they always have, but now you have Ville Leino saying "If Kopecky is worth 3.5 a year, then I know I'm worth 6." Of course the players love this. If you're Jeff Finger or Wiznewski, you love getting a fat check for a mediocre skillset. But that's not healthy longterm, and leads to escalations of salaries ala Suter/Parise/Weber. You say noone forced the owners to give these guys the contracts. This is true. However, if the owners all got together and decided they wouldn't spend more than x dollars for any contract, everyone would be complaining about collusion and how the system's not fair. Can't have it both ways. If they got rid of the salary floor, or made it a percentage rather than a hard number based on the cap, and removed revenue sharing, that would go a long way to sorting this out. Let the CBJ spend nothing on players, and let them die. But they players wouldn't accept that either. Teams going away means less jobs in the NHL, and Ericsson, Emmerton, Drew Miller, etc. would end up in the AHL. There's no easy solution here, but you can't pretend the players are operating in a vacuum either, and that the only party at fault is the owners/league.

I finally get it. frankgrimes is Jim Balsille. One of the 3 people left on earth who use a blackberry, and has a total hate hard on for Bettman and the owners to the exclusion of everything else. Still mad they wouldn't let you buy the Pens or Predators, or circumvent everything for the Coyotes? Seriously, we get it. The owners should be forced to give 99% of the revenue to the players, pay for all other costs out of their own pockets, and let the players pick what nights they play and who their teammates are. Hell, lets dismantle the front offices, and let the players have a multibillion dollar beer league. Screw the owners who pay for the buildings, staff, insurance costs, medical, etc.

I was expecting this:

That's the thing though, they HAVE to offer these contracts, or someone else will. If you want a top tier player, you have to pay for it, or someone like the Rags or Wings will steal them from you. If all the GMs got together and said "OK, no more contracts above X dollars," the players would sue the league for anti-trust violations due to collusion charges, and noone wants that. The real problem is the salary floor. Your Florida and Nashville and Columbus teams all give out these ridiculous contracts to scrubs so they can make the floor. Then the upper tier players say "If Tomas Kopecky is worth 3 million a year, there is no way I'm not worth 6 million per," and it spirals from there. I think more than anything it's one of those unforeseen issues like the signing bonus/front loaded 30 year deals that needs to be fixed. If they did a salary rollback to something reasonable, and then lower the floor and close the frontloaded contracts loophole, it would put all the teams in much better financial position going forward, and prevent the type of salary escalation that happened since the last lockout. I mean, the players are going to eventually accept a rollback of some sort, if it gets to a lockout. Not sure why they don't just bite the bullet and get it over with.

The players getting what they want won't lower prices for consumers either. If anything, prices are going to go up. That's an invalid argument. Everyone is being greedy. It's millionaires vs billionaires squabbling over crumbs.

The players don't care about the fans either. Noone in this situation cares about the fans. It's kind of obvious, but everyone is running around "Ohh...Buttman doesn't care. He's terrible" "The owners are greedy, they don't care." "If only those poor players could just get what they want, we can have hockey." It's disingenuous to think that anyone at all cares about the fans, and that only Bettman is in the way, If the players really cared, why not accept the offer? Once it goes to a lockout, they're going to get a crappier deal anyway so they can start making money again.

Blog Here There are no good guys in the NHL’s labor dispute There is an incessant need to assign blame in the way we analyze situations. We love our dichotomies. There are good guys and bad guys. People who are at fault and people who are victims. Winners. Losers. So on. So forth. More often than not though, this isn’t how things work. Rarely, in the grand scheme of things, do things break up so conveniently. It would be magnificent for those of us who have to write about things, but it’s simply not the case. When it is broken up that way, it’s largely fabricated. I’m here to tell you NHL Labor Dispute 2012 ™ is not Gary Bettman’s fault. It’s not Donald Fehr’s fault. It’s not the owners’ fault. It’s not the players’ fault. It’s their collective fault. They are all utterly terrible. Gary Bettman Gary Bettman is a slime ball, I know this, you know this, your mother who hasn’t watched hockey since Bobby Orr’s rookie season knows this. There’s something incredibly offputting about his demeanor and general approach to dealing with human beings that ignites the rage furnace lying within each of us. He is the Kurtz of this novel and the NHL, the league we watch 10 months of the year, is his vile abyss. He plucks teams from their homes, he locks the doors on seasons, he conducts boos from center ice like a maniacal conductor playing to the audience. He postures on how the NHL is working diligently to solve the problems that they have played a starring role in creating. They’ve been ready to negotiate for months apparently, they want to talk it out, it’s that damn NHLPA holding up the process. We just want to work to get the game back for our fans. No, he doesn’t. He has a job to do and he doesn’t give a damn about you, or me, or your mother who hasn’t watched since Bobby Orr’s rookie season. He is a mouthpiece, nothing more. A smug, infuriating mouthpiece. Yet, for all of his cons, this is not his fault. He’s playing his part, doing his job and his job is to get what his bosses need and get out. Donald Fehr Donald Fehr is a weasel. For those of you who don’t follow the baseball circuit, you didn’t know this when he was hired, but you will soon find out. He causes problems. He did in baseball and he will maintain his performance across sports. Bo Jackson, meet your union head equivalent. To clear up his track record, he presided over an MLB lockout and lost World Series in 1994 which put a hefty portion of people off the sport. This came before a nice segue into the Steroid Era which brought fans back to the game with DINGERS and alienated them at the same time when the fallout came. If you’re a player you love this guy and it’s pretty clear why. He doesn’t take crap from the league, Bettman or the media. You know he’s going to get you closer to what you demand. And you know he literally doesn’t care what you think about him. If you’re going to guess how many damns Donald Fehr gives, set the line at one and take the under. Again though, like Bettman, he is a mouthpiece, nothing more. He is there to butt heads with Gary Bettman because the players pay him to, and regardless of how much of a jerk he appears to be, it’s barely more than a charade. Everybody has a mortgage to pay, and his need to pay the bill requires an unsavouryness that we have and will come to know. The Owners The owners are totally insufferable, aren’t they? I mean seriously. You get coaxed into signing these players for a decade plus and hundreds of millions of dollars and then cry poor come negotiation time. You weren’t poor two weeks ago, how are you poor now? If you want a league with a sustainable economic structure, perhaps you shouldn’t be handing out contracts to the Rick DiPietro’s of the world which put them on various Forbes lists for the world’s wealthiest people despite the fact he doesn’t work very much. Wouldn’t it be nice to have 82 paid sick days a year? Obviously this is hyperbole, but still. Completely ridiculous. Again though, this is ultimately what the fans want from their teams. To assemble a winner at all costs, financial or otherwise. What do we care anyways? They’re loaded, they can afford it. Who cares if we’re stuck with Rick DiPietro for another 332 years? Or Alexei Yashin for the rest of his life? I want titles dammit! Yet, we don’t want this. Nobody wants this. We have created a monster. Charles Wang, you have set a dangerous precedent that became much much worse once you made Ed Snider think you were on to something. The Players I understand that it’s tough for people to see how the players are at fault in this scenario, but it’s really not that tough to understand. You can’t blame these guys for signing outrageous contracts because that’s not how things work. I have a hard time believing any of us wouldn’t take all of the money for several years if we had the offers, but the rhetoric gets tiring. Just so we’re clear on a couple of things here… players complaining about the way rules are enforced for safety reasons is a joke. You want to stop getting hit in the head or plowed from behind? Don’t hit anyone in the head or plow them from behind. A riveting concept, I know. Also, this hockey brotherhood business is a little confusing. I know they’re all brothers and such when the camera is rolling, but the on-ice atmosphere is considerably different. It’s very cute seeing guys with a history of run-ins bro-hugging their way through union meetings. Also, do overseas players count as part of the hockey brotherhood? Because I don’t think it’ll feel that way when NHLers hop overseas to take their jobs during a lockout. I wouldn’t do that to my brother. Well, unless he was a real jerk. The players here are completely self-interested and self-absorbed, like every other party here, only they have less riding on this than anyone because they will be hired no matter what. The players are just as guilty of jobbing the fans as our previous three nutbar parties and you better not let them off the hook in the court of public opinion. Conclusions Everybody in this situation sucks. They are all flat out terrible. Bettman is a fink, Fehr is a rat, the owners are hypocrites who need to be saved from themselves, and the players don’t give a damn because they’re going to get paid no matter what, it’s just a matter of where and whose job they’re taking. The lockout, forthcoming at that, is not as simple as being Bettman’s fault, Fehr’s fault, the owners’ fault or the players’ fault. Anyone who tells you to zero in on one is lying to you and probably has an agenda. It’s not black and white but it is that simple. Collective bargaining means collective blame.

The NHLPA would never agree to contraction, nor would the BOG. The NHLPA would lose ~30 jobs, and the remaining owners would have to pony up to *buy* the team that they want to contract. "Yeah, yeah," you say, "the league already owns the Coyotes," but I doubt they're going to want to flush away the millions of dollars they have been paying over the past couple of seasons. So then you're talking about the Isles or Devils, and getting those teams out of bankruptcy so you can fold them? Not gonna happen.

Yep, God forbid that the teams that earn their way to the finals be allowed to play due to their markets. Much better for the fans in Edmonton or Calgary to know their team has no chance to win due to being in smaller markets.