February proposal vs. current speculated deal - question

[Nomad]

Why don't we just look at the numbers...

Last February deal by the NHL prior to the cancellation of the season:
$42.5M non-adjusting hard cap. Subtract the included $2.2M (average) for insurance and benefits brings it down to $40.3M cap on salaries and bonuses.

Alleged deal currently on the table:
$37-39M cap based on revenues, which are stated to be calculated at a 15% decrease from the previous season. Cap is said not to include the cost of additional "player costs," simply salaries and bonuses.

So in year one, if the calculations turn out to be accurate, we are looking at between $1.3M and $3.3M differential. Upon revenues returning to the point at which they previously were (multiply by 1.176), we are looking at a salary cap between $43.5M and $46M, an increase from the February offer of between $3.2M and $5.7M per team.


Oh, on the idea that the February offer being negotiable - what would make you say that? When the league offered the $42.5M, the PA dropped their offer by $3M to $49M, and the league walked away.

 

[Tawnos]

Are you really trying to argue that the deal the NHL was offering got WORSE from Feb.2 to Feb.16?

The truth is that the NHL made adjustments to specific NHLPA complaints - they took away linkage only because the NHLPA WAS ADAMANT THAT IT WOULD NEVER ACCEPT LINKAGE!!

The NHL took out linkage because that's what the NHLPA said it wanted.

That last-ditch effort was the only offer the NHL ever made, from the very beginning, that didn't include linkage.

You can't possibly argue that the NHLPA has now won a victory by getting linkage back in the deal.

As was mentioned, the NHLPA realized that an unlinked Cap as low as the NHL had it was worse for them than a linked Cap at close to the same level because of upward mobility. An unlinked Cap at, say $49m is okay, they were willing to accept that because the number was high enough to justify no linkage.

This is exactly the point - both the proposal then and the proposal now are based around a 54% linkage.

The difference is that now, this means much less money for the players than it did then.

Remember, the NHL in their Dec.16th counterproposal included a fixed floor % (1/30th of 51%).

We aren't comparing what happened in December.

What?

The NHL explicitly said it wanted no luxury tax.

The NHLPA insisted that it wanted luxury tax.

The NHL, in this offered, said that if the NHLPA wanted a luxury tax within the cap system, they would negotiate it.

Why does the NHLPA want a luxury tax? Because it gives the poorer teams more money to spend.

Read nyr7andcounting's post.

That's not what I've heard, but perhaps.

Today's LA Times report said it would be baseball-style arbitration, which is a step down from the NHLPA's Dec.9th proposal.

That came out of left field... I'm not sure if I believe that report. It is possible though, and that's a draw anyway. The NHLPA wanted to keep player-side-only arbitration, the NHL wanted to get rid of arbitration completely. This falls right in the middle. Neither side wins or loses.

What do you mean "except"?

What is more accurate than the full text proposals?

The partial text proposals?

what are you talking about?

The point is that given that no one know what will actually be in the deal, you are completely out of line by speculating on things that haven't even appeared in rumors. In fact, these are things that never appeared in rumors, they only appeared in the actual full-text of the proposals. The point is that you claimed that because they haven't appeared in rumors, they may have been lost and that's drawing conclusions where there are none to be drawn.

Again, no one is claiming a victory for the NHLPA, but signs point to this deal being better than the final deal 8in February. But again, the truth is that no one knows. We're arguing rumors.

 

[SuperUnknown]

Oh, on the idea that the February offer being negotiable - what would make you say that? When the league offered the $42.5M, the PA dropped their offer by $3M to $49M, and the league walked away.

It was negotiable, probably less on the cap amount than on other things. The PA counter offer was a joke, with upwards linkage only (for example). Bettman hinted the owners were ready to go to $45M, and they even went to a saturday negociating session to see if there was hope to reach an agreement. But the PA wouldn't agree on the cap amount before negociating the other issues, so it didn't get done.

The owners had every reason to give more back then. It was better for them to reach an agreement at that time and not be the first league to cancel a season.

 

[Nomad]

If the owners were ready to go to $45M, then why didn't they go to $45M? Because they expected the players to do it. They weren't willing to do the negotiating at that point, they were willing to make the other side negotiate down to the point that they were willing to argue from. So if the players came down to $45M, the owners would have responded with $43.5M, and they would have negotiated down to the middle ground from there, rather than arriving at the $45M-$46M figure that was the logical end to the series of offers at that time. The NHL stopped negotiating, and they were looking to go back to the point where the PA was negotiating against itself again.

 

[Boltsfan2029]

That came out of left field... I'm not sure if I believe that report. It is possible though, and that's a draw anyway. The NHLPA wanted to keep player-side-only arbitration, the NHL wanted to get rid of arbitration completely. This falls right in the middle.

I don't think so. If my understanding is correct, baseball-style arbitration leaves the arbiter with only two choices -- the team's offer or the player's demand. No longer will he be able to set a figure of his choosing.

 

[Boltsfan2029]

So the newest rumours now have these two key factors added in:


1) Individual Player Cap of 20% of the Team Payroll Cap. (approx. $7.5m)
2) Baseball Style Arbitration

Wasn't there also something about bonuses being standardized? That's big, IMO.

 

[zeke]

Yes. It got worse from early February until the 16th, but because of the PA's stance it got better legally.

They didn't "win a victory" by getting linkage back in the deal because they didn't have to do anything to get it there, the NHL wanted it anyway. But if you consider how low the unlinked cap was going to be, it then makes sense to take linkage. The cap is almost the same to start and now it can increase as revenues increase.

Sorry, let me get this straight.

You are arguing - with a straight face - the following:

1) The League had linkage in every single offer it ever made, aside from one.
2) The NHLPA made a very public stance that it would never, ever accept linkage.
3) At the last minute, the NHL conceded this point, and took linkage off the table - even though they didn't want to - just to try to make a deal the players would accept.
4) The new offer contains the linkage that was there along.

You are now concluding - with a straight face - that the NHLPA is getting a better deal in this regard than it would have had without cancelling this season.

You are really arguing this?

seriously?

The PA insisted it wanted a luxury tax way back when, before a restrictive cap was on the table and before they accepted the NHL's demands for linkage. The NHL said it didn't want a luxury tax, because it was being proposed by the PA as an alternative to a cap.

You have to realize that as the offers change so do the stances of the 2 sides. The PA doesn't want a luxury tax if there is going to be a restrictive cap anyway. The only reason they would ever want it would be to give the poorer teams some more money, but it looks like they have taken care of that by getting the owners to agree to share more revenues.

No sane person is coming on here and saying the PA won the fight, but if you compare the $42.5M offer with the deal today, I don't see how you can say it got worse. Don't compare the stances of each side at the time because it's obvious one side was wrong, as their strategy didn't work. At the time they realized it didn't work it did make more sense to give in to the other sides demands because it would result in a better deal. NOT a win in the CBA negotiations, but a better deal.

Again, it's simple.

The NHL explicitly maintained, from the very beginning, that they had NO INTEREST IN LUXURY TAX.

They also acknolwedged that if it would get a deal done, they would negotiate one within the Cap framework, although not superceding it.


The current rumours state that the current deal being worked on either a) does not include a luxury tax; or b) it contains one within the framework of a cap.

Either way, this is something which the NHL already had on the table before the season was cancelled, and thus it is not something which the NHLPA has earned by getting the season cancelled.

 

[Tawnos]

Here's what you aren't understanding.

The stance of the NHLPA was not what was best for them.

 

[zeke]

We aren't comparing what happened in December.

We most definitely are.

We are asking this question:

Is the NHLPA getting a better deal now than they could have had before forcing the cancellation of the season?

The answer is an obvious no.

The point is that given that no one know what will actually be in the deal, you are completely out of line by speculating on things that haven't even appeared in rumors. In fact, these are things that never appeared in rumors, they only appeared in the actual full-text of the proposals. The point is that you claimed that because they haven't appeared in rumors, they may have been lost and that's drawing conclusions where there are none to be drawn.

I held no such double standard.

I guessed that they might have gained on the rookie-contract front by reducing it to 3-years.....which, based on today's rumous, is also wrong. Looks like they're stuck with 4 years. So they didn't gain anything here.

I guessed they might have gained some concessions in arbitration, but, again, based on today's rumours, it seems like that's not true either.

Again, no one is claiming a victory for the NHLPA, but signs point to this deal being better than the final deal 8in February. But again, the truth is that no one knows. We're arguing rumors.

No, the truth is that we have a very solid picture as to what this deal will look like.

We could be wrong, of course, but we've got a good picture.

 

[Tawnos]

There were also, however, two key parts of the deal which were of great benefit to the players, which I haven't heard of in the new deal, which they may have lost

The point is that you claimed that because they haven't appeared in rumors, they may have been lost and that's drawing conclusions where there are none to be drawn.

I held no such double standard.

Ok?

No, the truth is that we have a very solid picture as to what this deal will look like.

We could be wrong, of course, but we've got a good picture.

I've heard $36m for the cap. I've heard $39m for the cap. I've heard luxury tax. I've heard no luxury tax. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

How exactly is that a good picture?

 

[Nomad]

I've seen good pictures of Bigfoot, too.

We have no idea what the deal is.

 

[IceDragoon]

Glenn Healy is an idiot!

I must admit tho, his witless battles with Burkie were the high points of this lockout.
Heals' subsequent 180s have been rather amusing, too.


WIN-WIN-SPINS, inevitably, appear when conflict has ended.
Now... I'm officially - pumped!!!

And...
It doesn't matter to me, how accurate the details are in this (leak?).
We'll get to crunch #s, soon enough, imho.

 

[hockeytown9321]

This is a better deal for the players, hands down. It's more that just dollars and cents and a cap. It's about the way the deal is structured. It's about how revenues are determined, and how teams report it. It's about arbitration, qualifying offers, minimum salaries, rookie contracts and buy outs. It's a lot more than just a cap number. Once anyone with half a brain reads beyond the cap number they will see that in the long run, this deal is better than the February deal.

I agree. The cap numbers are going to end up fairly close too. The $42.5M cap included the estimated $2.5M benfits. The current rumored $37M cap does not, so its a $3M difference per team, and its only that if you're Gary Bettman and beleive everyone will spend to the cap.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

Sorry, let me get this straight.

You are arguing - with a straight face - the following:

1) The League had linkage in every single offer it ever made, aside from one.
2) The NHLPA made a very public stance that it would never, ever accept linkage.
3) At the last minute, the NHL conceded this point, and took linkage off the table - even though they didn't want to - just to try to make a deal the players would accept.
4) The new offer contains the linkage that was there along.

You are now concluding - with a straight face - that the NHLPA is getting a better deal in this regard than it would have had without cancelling this season.

You are really arguing this?

No. You clearly didn't comprehend anything I said, especially when I said "They didn't "win a victory" by getting linkage back in the deal because they didn't have to do anything to get it there, the NHL wanted it anyway."

Not once have I ever said the PA is getting a better deal now, as far as linkage, than they could have had without cancelling the season...as a matter of fact I have said they could have gotten the same deal way back when had they accepted linkage and negotiated off of it from the start. They clearly lost the fight, so it's easy to look back and say they should have taken linkage in September.

What I am saying is that the $42.5M offer was not better than the current deal, even though this one contains linkage. The main reason is that the hard cap in the February offer was so low that linkage is actually the better option, despite the fact that the PA was against linkage for a long time(which, like I said, probably wasn't the right strategy to begin with)

Again, it's simple.

The NHL explicitly maintained, from the very beginning, that they had NO INTEREST IN LUXURY TAX.

They also acknolwedged that if it would get a deal done, they would negotiate one within the Cap framework, although not superceding it.

The current rumours state that the current deal being worked on either a) does not include a luxury tax; or b) it contains one within the framework of a cap.

Either way, this is something which the NHL already had on the table before the season was cancelled, and thus it is not something which the NHLPA has earned by getting the season cancelled.

? My point is that the PA only wanted a luxury tax if it was the main deterent to spending, as in it wasn't followed by a cap. If there is a cap, the PA doesn't want a luxury tax because the cap is already stopping teams from spending.

The ONLY reason the PA would ever want a luxury tax in a cap system would be to get money into the hands of small markets who can spend it...but revenue sharing is a better way to do that and it seems like that is going to happen.

If you are saying that having no luxury tax in this deal doesn't make it better for the players because the NHL didn't want it in the $42.5M deal anyway, than that's fine. If you think it could have been easily negotiated out of that deal, than yes getting it out of the current deal isn't any big gain for the PA.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

I agree. The cap numbers are going to end up fairly close too. The $42.5M cap included the estimated $2.5M benfits. The current rumored $37M cap does not, so its a $3M difference per team, and its only that if you're Gary Bettman and beleive everyone will spend to the cap.

The $42.5M offer before the season was cancelled DIDN'T include $2.5M in benefits, I think.

 

[OILBEEF]

No sane person is coming on here and saying the PA won the fight, but if you compare the $42.5M offer with the deal today, I don't see how you can say it got worse. Don't compare the stances of each side at the time because it's obvious one side was wrong, as their strategy didn't work. At the time they realized it didn't work it did make more sense to give in to the other sides demands because it would result in a better deal. NOT a win in the CBA negotiations, but a better deal.

Zeke wasn't comparing the 42.5 offer. He's comparing the Feb. 2 offer to today. That offer is essentially the same as today accept for the fact the players lost the remaining of 04-05 contracts and are starting off with 300 million less in revenues.

Had the PA decided to negotiate a deal a year ago they would be getting the same deal as today. So it basically cost the players $1.134 billion(54% of 2.1 billion) in 2004-2005 and an estimated $162,000,000 (54% of 300 Mill) in 2005-2006 if the season starts on time and 54% of the damage that has been created for all years of this deal.

Somebody should have gotten the PA a calculator a year ago.

 

[zeke]

Not once have I ever said the PA is getting a better deal now, as far as linkage, than they could have had without cancelling the season...as a matter of fact I have said they could have gotten the same deal way back when had they accepted linkage and negotiated off of it from the start.

then why are you disagreeing with me?

 

[nyr7andcounting]

Zeke wasn't comparing the 42.5 offer. He's comparing the Feb. 2 offer to today. That offer is essentially the same as today accept for the fact the players lost the remaining of 04-05 contracts and are starting off with 300 million less in revenues.

Had the PA decided to negotiate a deal a year ago they would be getting the same deal as today. So it basically cost the players $1.134 billion(54% of 2.1 billion) in 2004-2005 and an estimated $162,000,000 (54% of 300 Mill) in 2005-2006 if the season starts on time and 54% of the damage that has been created for all years of this deal.

Somebody should have gotten the PA a calculator a year ago.

Yea that's exactly what I said. Had the players taken linkage right off the bat and demanded that owners share and increased amount of revenues in return, they would have gotten the same deal.

Anyway, I don't why he is comparing the February 2nd deal and that's my point. The thread is basically asking 'how does the deal that could have saved the season compare to todays deal'. That's the deal the poster is talking about and that's the deal Roenick was talking about. That deal is worse than the current deal, basically because the PA's strategy failed and it was better to give in to linkage than take the hard caps that they could have gotten.

 

[nyr7andcounting]

then why are you disagreeing with me?

I'm not, your the one that replied to my post because apparently you didn't understand what I was saying. Anyway, the reason I started posting in this thread is because the poster that started it was asking how the $42.5M offer compares to this deal. This deal is better than that one, that's all.

 

[Drury_Sakic]

In the long run it turns out to be a better deal for the PA...

But short term its hurts... 1.2 billion lost in last years contracts... a few million lower cap (from 42 to 37).... and the biggest loss is that the PA lost all of what it was fighting against(no cap, no linkage)...

That said.. if you can get over the fact you lost 1.2 billion last year, this deal is going to end up being better... More rights for the players... linkage will make the cap higher, as revenues will increase...would not be shocked to see it higher than 45 million at some point....


Its all in the eye of the beholder....

 

[GSC2k2*]

Why don't we just look at the numbers...

Last February deal by the NHL prior to the cancellation of the season:
$42.5M non-adjusting hard cap. Subtract the included $2.2M (average) for insurance and benefits brings it down to $40.3M cap on salaries and bonuses.

Alleged deal currently on the table:
$37-39M cap based on revenues, which are stated to be calculated at a 15% decrease from the previous season. Cap is said not to include the cost of additional "player costs," simply salaries and bonuses.

So in year one, if the calculations turn out to be accurate, we are looking at between $1.3M and $3.3M differential. Upon revenues returning to the point at which they previously were (multiply by 1.176), we are looking at a salary cap between $43.5M and $46M, an increase from the February offer of between $3.2M and $5.7M per team.


Oh, on the idea that the February offer being negotiable - what would make you say that? When the league offered the $42.5M, the PA dropped their offer by $3M to $49M, and the league walked away.

If I have to correct another pro-PA lemming on this...

The $42.5 cap was - read this carefully - EXCLUSIVE OF BENEFITS. Even asuming the rest of your misguided analysis is correct, which it is not, the difference is as much as $5 million. PLus the numbers are misleading, as it is ultimately based on 54% of revenues. At $1.8 billion, th actual league cap per team is $1.8 billion x 54% = $32.4 million. If teams exceed that in spending, the excess is returned to the league. how does it sound now?

 

[Digger12]

If I have to correct another pro-PA lemming on this...

You say that, but you keep doing it anyway.

I'm assuming it must be a labour of love?

 

[Beukeboom Fan]

I find it odd that linkage is now seen as a huge pro-player benefit, when it was the absolute deal breaker before.

I will say that we haven't seen the deal, so it's VERY hard to speculate on the differences at this point.

Someone made the point earlier, but I think it's HUGE, so I'll repeat it. When the players agree to linkage, they are now on the hook for 54% of the damage caused by the lockout. Every advertiser that doesn't come back, and every ticket that goes unsold because they took a year off will impact the players. No one will be able to quantify that number or how much of it could have been avoided with a shortened season in 2004-05, but I bet it will be substantial.

I think it's very possible that league revenues will be substantially below the $1.8B that everyone is basing their current cap figures on. It will be interesting to see if this is a factor going forward.

 

[Nomad]

EDIT: Mistake. Verifying

My apologies - $42.5M without considering benefits. However, the alleged cap today is not $32.4M per team. It is $972M across the league, at $1.8B revenues. If 15 teams spend $39M and 15 teams spend $24M, then nothing gets paid back to the league, since overall league spending is at $945M, $27M shy of the 54%.

If it was a cap at $32.4M, then league-wide spending would likely be around $846M, with half the teams spending to the maximum and the other half spending $24M.

You see...just because there is a cap...does not mean that every team will spend to it. In fact, if every team spent to the cap, it would be a testament that the cap is far too low.

 

[Boltsfan2029]

What I'm wondering is what part of standardized bonuses and a maximum salary per player (the no more than 20% clause) is better than any deal that's been offered before...

This is assuming these reports are accurate, of course.