toby91_ca

If the NHLPA would have met with the NHL, the fans would have been happier because there would have been apparent traction.  Also, if they would have met in January, both sides would have been better off in some part due to the fact they were talking sooner.  I don't know if a deal would have been reached or not.  I just can't understand how someone can say that meeting early wouldn't be a factor at all.  The NHLPA behavior at least shows a pattern of negative bargaining behavior.

I can absolutely, without any shred of doubt whatsoever, tell you that it wouldn't have matter at all whether they started negotiating in January or June.  Time is not the issue.  It takes no time at all to strike a deal.  The issue is that no one wants to move off their positions.  There is no way that would have happened before a deadline.  No one would have lost any money between January and now....the only hope now is that as both sides start losing money, someone will make a move (history has shown that doesn't matter too much though).

Thanks for providing the source.

One thing is for certain, the owners did come off of their lowball offer.  Who knows if that offer is off the table or not.  Lets say that they went up 5%.  That would mean that instead of 57-43 in favor of the owners, it would be 52-48 in favor of the owners.  The NHLPA has also come down a bit as well as you said.  They should be continuing to bargain back and forth until a deal is met.  They have already come down a good amount over what they started with.  I guess neither side wants to come down much more than they already have.

The difference here is that the starting point (expiring CBA) was 57%.  Owners came in with a new offer of 43%.  If the NHLPA were to take the same approach, they should have started at 71%, but their initial offer was already a move towards what the owners want.

No offer was tabled, but the NHL was on record saying that they were ready to start the process in January.  I remember reading about it, but I didn't find much on it other than snippets of info.

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Back in January, NHL fans were assured initial negotiations regarding the next round of NHL collective bargaining would begin following the All-Star Game.
That subsequently changed to a vague point later in the regular season,to some point following the Stanley Cup Playoffs
It’s believed there’s been some quiet talk behind the scenes between the two sides , but the real negotiations probably won’t start until mid-July at the earliest, allowing time for the NHL Awards, entry draft weekend, and the opening week of unrestricted free agency.
In mid-March, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman professed to be unconcerned (“I’m not worried. At all”) over when negotiations would start, saying his side was ready whenever the PA was ready to talk.

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http://spectorshocke...ws-may-17-2012/

You do realize that's all public posturing right?  The league suggesting they are willing to negotiate and any time whenever the PA is ready is no different than the PA saying they are willing to start the season under the existing CBA while a new one is negotiated.  I'm not sure why either side is really all that interested in getting public support on their side though, I don't see it as having any real impact on resolving any differences they may have.

I'm not one of those guys that are against the players from the view that they make too much money, etc.  If an owner generates $100 million profit off a player, is it fair for that player to get $5 million and the owner get $95 million?  Extreme case, but some would look at the player and say "hey, you are making $5 million, how much do you need...suck it up and play".....however, I think that's hardly fair.

That said, I think it's a fine line trying to determine what is fair and what's not.  I'm not sure what math is being used to demonstrate that.  I am more on the player's side right now though as their proposals at least attempt to address the issues faced by the NHL.  I'm not sure about the fairness of the NHLPA's numbers, but their approach at least attempts to address the issues.  The NHL's proposal, whether the sharing is fair or not is plain dumb as it does not address their issues.....all it would do it make the richer teams richer and the poor teams be a little less poor in the first year or so.

My solution would be as follows:

Determine an appropriate fair profit margin to be earned by the league as a whole (based on appropriate risk weightings and market data, etc.).  If overall league revenues are $3.4 billion, all other expenses before player salaries = X.....after deducting X, you can determine how much should be allocated to a player salaries while maintaining an overall profit margin of 10% for example (not sure what that appropriate number may be, but it should be easily calculated, shouldn't be a number out of the air).

In terms of then moving down to the individual teams, that's an ownership issue.  You are going to having some owners profess their lack of willingness to share profits with other teams who aren't running their businesses properly, etc, which is fine, but if the league really wants parity, they have to figure out a way for the owners to share the wealth with each other......that should not be a player's concern.

SO FREE SPEECH COST $250,000 NOW. Not so free! I'm a Kings fan from 1969, if Luc Robitaille got fined for saying something like that, I'd be boycotting all things NHL and AEG (who own the Kings). Oh, I forgot, because I'm out $1000 on preseason travel plans for Kings games that have been cancelled, I am done with NHL. I lost money on the previous lockouts as well. I'm supporting the AHL, ECHL. Maybe see if DirecTV can get me some of the KHL games.

Goodbye NHL!

Freedom of speech is not absolute.  I'm assuming you understand this, but if not, he's not speaking as an individual, he's speaking as the representative of an organization.....he got fined by the organization....he didn't get fined by any lawful body or something like that.

Back on topic, I wonder what Datsyuk thinks...seems to me he took a bit of a shot at him indirectly when talking about players that went overseas to play....."we all know who they are"

All four Detroit professional sports made it. As suggested, I'll take a grain of salt with this as well.

#30 - Detroit Red Wings (8th in NHL)

#52 - Detroit Tigers (12th in MLB)

#56 - Detroit Lions (14th in NFL)

#80 - Detroit Pistons (18th in NBA)

All professional sporting teams (NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL) in all cities made it.  It's not the top 100, it list them all.

I think the list is pretty irrelevent and it really doesn't relate at all to how good any of the teams are.  There seems to be a pretty high rating on how expensive tickets are (which is why you see Phoenix high on the list and Toronto low on the list).  I've seen these lists before and I just find them very weird.  Essentially, they are trying to show where the best bang for you buck can be found.  Generally speaking, teams in major cities will be handicapped because their tickets will be more expensive (generally), but you would also need to consider that the disposable income of people in those cities would be higher (generally).....so it's tough to compare.

What evidence do you have that the floor is a problem? How many teams can't afford to spend to the floor? And do you realize that compliance with the floor is based on cap hits, not actual salary, so teams can in fact spend under the floor. Edmonton could end up paying almost $10M less in salary than they have in cap hits.

I don't have any specific "evidence" that the floor is a problem to a lot of teams other than it being obvious....a lot of teams simply can't afford to pay to the floor.  When you say the floor is based on cap hits, not actual salary, well.....the cap is based on actual salary, so it's the same thing.  If you suggest Edmonton can end up paying almost $10 million less in salary than they have in cap hits, that just means they pay $10 million more in salary than in cap hits in the future, it's just a timing thing.  In the end, total cap hit = total dollars spent, there is no difference.

Bettman alone isn't responsible for 3 lockouts.  Both sides are responsible.  It takes two sides to come up with a deal.  

Actually, if there is a lockout, Bettman and the owners would be 100% responsible.  The same would be said about the players if there was a strike, they'd be 100% responsbile.  Funny thing is, a lot of people don't necessarily see the difference between the two.  I know that's not where you are coming from, you are seeing it as two sides needing to come to an agreement or there will be no hockey come October.  Therefore, if there is no hockey...both sides to blame.

There is some truth to that, but to be perfectly accurate, the players are willing to start the season as usual and continue to negotiate and reach a deal.  There is no reason they can't continue to operate under the existing deal until a new one is reached.  The thing is, the owners have said, they have no interest in starting the season under the existing deal, therefore, they will lockout the players if there is no agreement by September 15th.  It's really a negotiation tool, if they don't lockout the players, they don't hold a lot of power to get a good deal done for them.

If the owners don't lockout the players (which Bettman already said they would), the players could choose to strike, but that wouldnt' happen.

If Weber truly wanted out of Nashville, you would have to think he wouldn't have signed a 14-year offer sheet with another team.  Rationale being that it woudl be close to 100% that Nashville woudl match and he'd then have a 14 year contract with Nashville (doens't mean he's stuck there for 14 years, but you know....).

If Weber thought he'd be getting out of Nashville by signing an offer sheet, he got bad advice.  From everything I've heard though, he has no issues with Nashville.

Not trying to come across as purely disagreeable, but my question to you would be... how does revenue sharing help fix the problem of teams in a weak hockey market that cannot sustain themselves? The only way that revenue sharing would ever *potentially* be viable is if a team in a strong hockey market experienced a local disaster that effected revenues and needed support for a few years until it became financially soluble again. A team that's just in a weak market offers no reasonable guarantee that it will be soluble, and revenue sharing therefor becomes a perpetual band-aid at the expense of successful teams.

I guess we are probably looking at it differently.  I don't necessarily see revenue sharing as a "fix" to a temporary issue for which the smaller market team will come out of.  I see it more of a permanant thing whereby teams share revenue since overall revenues are driven by the league, not necessarily individual teams.  I'm not suggesting you take all the revenues and divide it evenly amongst all the teams in the league (though I'm sure there are people out there that might suggest that), I just think there shoudl be sharing of revenues that are not necessarily team specific.  A team can't make money if they aren't playing another team.

To use an extreme example, if the league was made up of 2 teams and they just played each other all the time and the only revenues being generated were from the gate, if one team was in a different geographic region, different economic factors, etc., they might be bringing in significantly more revenue than the other team.  In that model, it would make sense for one team to be bringing in more money, but it wouldn't make sense if there was an enormous disparity between the two.

Look, I think the ultimate solution is to get rid of the teams in struggling markets, but I think we need to forget about that, it is not an available option.

In the event that there are no favourable markets to move a team to, the franchise should be eliminated entirely. In summation, financially insolvent teams should be eliminated or moved to a market where they can be solvent.

Won't make the players very happy at all, for every team that is eliminated, there would be "x" number of players out of a job.

I think revenue sharing needs to exist to some exit.  I agree with the notion that if a market simply isn't working, you need to deal with it (move to a better market), but I think sharing needs to exist because the generation of revenues by each individual team are not solely do to their individual efforts.  I think elimination of franchises is the absolute last resort and would be avoided at all costs (both sides, players and owners, probably agree with that).

<sub>The correct answer is that any ramifications from the new CBA will be dealt with in the new CBA, so no one really knows at this point.  If I were to guess, I'd assume the cap will be unimpacted inititially and the structure will just move from their based on how they structure the new deal.  That said, it is entirely possible that they agree to move the 57% down to 54% or 52% or 50% of league revenues for players.  They could take that downward movement and lower the cap proportionately and also then lower all existing contracts down proportionately as well.

I'm pretty confident in saying that the new CBA should not cause teams to have to get rid of any existing players.</sub>

WOW are you even serious????   .... Crosby, Ovechkin, Heatly, Hossa and Kovy put up on worse teams than the BJs in their past.???????

those players put up better numbers and they were on worse teams than columbus???how the hell was pittsburgh,washington,san jose etc... worse than columbus?? columbus is a laughing stock , and who the hell did rick nash ever have to play with???? all those players you mentioned above ALL had someone to play with

rick nash has been a lone ranger in columbus his whole career

Crosby had 39 goals and 102 points in his rookie year on a god awful team.  44pts ahead of the #2 scorer on his team (same could be said for Ovie in his first cuople years).

The thing is, if you are a 3rd or 4th liner and then you get to play with the top line, get top line minutes and top line situations, your stats should grow significantly, but if you are the star player on your team, getting top minutes and playing top situations, playing with better players shouldn't increase your stats astronomically.  I don't want to say you wouldn't have better stats, because you probably would, but it likely wouldn't be as signficant as some think.  The bigger impact of playing with better players would be having a better record as a team.

That said, Nash is a winger and as a general rule, wingers tend to need "help" producing, someone to feed them the puck.  Centres should be able to crease offense on their own.  This is of course a huge generalization, but I'm not afraid to throw it out there.  Great centres will produce no matter who they play with, some upside if you plug in better wingers.  Great wingers will produce as well, but if you plug in a great centre with them, I suspect their production would increase as a much higher rate than the other way around.

this is really emberassing. Sundin over Shanny...

yep... talk about HHOF offices being in Toronto and this being no how correlated with votes...

disgusting!

If you think about it though, what arguments do you have for Shanahan over Sundin?  Yes, he scored more goals, but Sundin still had 564 goals.  Sundin scored the same number of points (give or take a few) in almost 200 less games.  I also think Sundin's international experience is a little more accomplished than Shanny's.

I think Shanhan's very low points per game stat hurt him.  He'll get in eventuall though.  If you look at this year's list, I could argue Shanny over Sundin, Oates or Bure, but you could argue the other way too.  The only non-argument would be that Sakic is a lock over them all.

Oates...much better ppg than Shanny, but after that, not much to say.

Bure....the question mark there is the fact his career was cut short....did he do enough?  I think his talents were superior to Shanahan's, his gpg and ppg stats blow Shanny's out of the water, but that has been shown in the past not to matter much when you are talking about shorter careers.  Bure waited awhile to get in though.

??? - I've always had a seat to games I've gone to, but I think most rinks in the NHL sell standing room only tickets.

Burrows is anything but a goon. He's a spot-picking rat. Had a "goon" been on the ice, I doubt Burrows goes after Kopitar.

But yes, the rough stuff after clean hits is annoying as hell. In essence, it deters hitting.

That's exactly the point.  When someone on your team gets hit hard....clean or not, you want to send a message that they will need to pay whenever they do that.....try to deter hitting the future, that's exactly what they are trying to accomplish.  To be honest, I'd be unhappy if my team didn't respond to hard hits, you have to show that you won't get pushed around.

Another thing to think about....I bet that hit isn't made of it wasn't Sedin...they target star players and try to punish them, you need to respond.  If the hit is dirty, the response would be a lot more violent.