Common sense - Why the season was cancelled!

[Luc Labelle]

The owners should've been pretty certain there would be no deal this season when it was a binary choice. And all their actions to date would reflect that. Poke, insult, threaten, hardball, no working together, no compromising, no good faith with player offers. No reason to think they expected a negotiated settlement with someone they spent a year poking with a stick.

Underlined is a very specific description of 99% of the behaviour coming from the NHLPA side. Until this lockout I have always hated Gary Bettman. Almost everything I have heard from the owner's side has been respectfully stated and inviting towards negotiation. Everything in retort by the NHLPA has sounded like brats in a sandbox back when I was two years old.

Now that the players have put a cap on the table, the owners have what they want. The players have bridged the philisophical divide, and now they can work together starting on the same page

The players proposal was not a cap. It was one-way linkage with an assinine indexing formula that would have made the last hyper-inflationary CBA seem like manna from heaven to the owners.

Every offer they make is accepted, ridiculed, and then used as a starting point for the next time. The players would be foolish to negotiate until the owners either win or negotiate a compromise they have been previously unwilling to do.

Perhaps if the players offers were not ridiculous then they would not be rejected outright. The 24% rollback was such a transparent offer that fan support for the players after the offer actually dropped. The inflationary measures of the former CBA were still in place.

The owners offered up linkage and profit sharing at one point which was swiftly rebuked by the players. An offer from which the players would have been wise to negotiate.

 

[mr gib]

If the NHL didn't want a season at this late stage they would not have made a last ditch offer or improved it to $42.5 million. Any other interpretation flies in the face of common sense. It isn't that complicated.

but was the union unaware of the 42.5 cap for the duration of the deal or did they drop that on them at the last minute knowing they'd balk?

 

[Icey]

It makes no sense to me that it was so quiet yesterday. I haven't seen much, some maybe, but not much in the way of either side saying anything. I figured there would be plenty of slamming going on by now.

Is it possible that the two sides do have an agreement in principle and just decided that trying to play a season now would just be to difficult?

There are the obvious facts that tickets would have to be printed, players signed, and all of the other things that go on. But maybe they realized that they would have to ask the players, a lot of whom are out of shape, to play every other night for the next 4 months (including playoffs).

I just don't know what else to think of all this silence...

It's time to give up on that pipe dream. The two sides are further apart than t hey were a year ago.

Both sides have March 1st meetings planned. Probably hear something after that, but don't expect it to be good.

 

[thinkwild]

Canard 1
The players proposal was not a cap.

Seems self evident it was.

Canard 2
It was one-way linkage with an assinine indexing formula that would have made the
last hyper-inflationary CBA seem like manna from heaven to the owners.

UAW workers get indexing. Many unions do. But its not tied to the revenues the owners wish to declare as business related, its more often tied to the cost of living. Oh I know the famous clause 7 hfboards is up in arms about thinking they have uncovered some massive conspiracy theory. Indexing a cap is totally different from linkage. And there is nothing inflationary about it And after players are taking huge cuts in salaries, and the league is at a low point, that would seem a reasonable place to start fropm to grow again together.

Canard 3
Perhaps if the players offers were not ridiculous then they would not be rejected outright. The 24% rollback was such a transparent offer that fan support for the players after the offer actually dropped.

I love this one. A 24% rollback is riduculous and transparently deceptive. Pretty masterful spin made it into conventional wisdom there.

Canard 4
The inflationary measures of the former CBA were still in place.

Clearly, every leverage point of negotiations was restructured to give the owners more leverage and control from the players offer. And the owners seemed to acept them as readily as they did the rollback.

 

[futurcorerock]

NHL to institute new rules when play resumes according to ESPN.

Exactly what I was predicting.

Nice to see Lemiuxe in it and that they even are considering removing the redline offside rule. That have worked in Europe. The big diffrent in Europe and the SEL today from 6-10 years ago is that the team that plays best hockey both offensivly and defensivly wins. Before the non-redline era there where basically 12 New Jersey Devils in the SEL. A extremly popular word among coaches today is "decision making", where as 10 years ago there was no real decision to make. In it self that it was successful in Europe it doesn´t mean that it would work the same way in NA. But it have one tremendous advantage, its impossible to play a completly "safe" game. You either give up your own blue line or the redline.

As it has been the last 7-8 years I´ve seen teams like the devils play a perfect defensive game, they have played for 60 minutes without allowing the other team one odd man rush and kept the shoots from the outside all night. Without a redline teams can trap on their own blue line like they did in the Olympiques, its not easy to beat that trap but its allot easier then beating one with a redline offside to back you up. All "experts" and coaches was against removing the redline in Sweden. Everyone said that it would make the game even more defensivly. But it hasn´t, the game today is allot more open. The game in the NHL is very diffrent from the one in Europe. I don´t think removing the redline in the NHL would change the game all that much at all. But the few changes that occured would be for the better. Another advantage is that d-men´s have to be more mobile. That would take away a few of lbs from the blue line and open up the game some more...

That article pumped me up thanks for the find!

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

but was the union unaware of the 42.5 cap for the duration of the deal or did they drop that on them at the last minute knowing they'd balk?

Or did the PA have their head in the sand, and it wasn't until the owners discussed the "details" of the CBA that the Linden and Saskin thought they were taking a step back? That's what I think happened. Both Linden & Saskin's quotes after the meeting made is sound like they were surprised by the details of the offer, which is VERY strange to me.

When Bettman offered the $42.5M, there had to be some discussion of the details. I can't beleive that Bettman would respond to the PA's $49M offer (with the imfamous clause #7) with just a dollar figure going back.

 

[futurcorerock]

Just putting together a roster won´t solve much if the product on the ice stinks. If the NHL comes back and leaves a luke warm are worse impression it would just dig itselfs a deaper grave.

Question brought up was whether or not GM's could put together a working roster.

Quality of play isnt the job for the GM.

 

[Mountain Dude]

No, the reason we're not playing, is because the owners are tired of losing money, and don't want to do it anymore.