Jester said:
i'm very pro-owner but...
can you really tell me if your boss at work decided to impose a limit on how much you could potentially make you wouldn't be slightly peeved at him? obviously these guys make a ton of cash, but i completely understand their argument against the idea of a salary cap... i know i'd argue against one at my job.
The problem becomes the picture that the players try to paint in defense of the anti-cap ideals. They act like they are the same as the average working class hockey fan. They aren't the simple fact is that if the players are responsible with their money in the way that a regular 9-to-5 guy/gal has to be, it wouldn't matter that there's a 24% rollback and a salary cap, because they'd still be able to live very comfortable lives.
But this isn't the case. We get guys telling everyone they need to earn the paycheque, because they spent last year's $2 million buying a gigantic house and an excessivly ornate car.
Even at the lowest ends of the NHL pay scale, the regular NHL guys still earn more money than just about anyone who isn't an uber-lawyer, extreme specialist surgeon, or a suit at a major company. They're not poor, so they should stop acting like this whole mess is sending them to the poorhouse. I don't need Jeff O'Neill telling me that "the guys making 6 million dollars will be ok, but the ones making 3 million will have to budget" (or something like that). Geez Jeffy, if
I earned $3 million per year and needed to budget because of a single year off
when I knew a work stoppage was coming, then I'd probably be checking that the safe I keep my money in isn't hooked into the vacuum system. Because the only way you would need to budget is if your funds get sucked away into oblivion
This is why the comparisons to the average man don't work. Things like this need context. It would be like if Industry A mandated an increase in the work day, and the workers protested and asked for support saying "This is unfair. If the guys in Industry B were given this mandate, their work day would increase from 12 to 18 hours. Do you think that's right?". Sounds all well and good. Nobody wants to tack 6 extra hours on the work day. The problem becomes that when you apply the context of Industry A, you find out that the 50% increase in the work day moves Inudustry A from 3 hours to 4.5 hours per day. Suddenly the plight of Industry A doesn't seem so dire, does it?