You seem to think the owners are smart enough to understand Finleys assertion and the inevitable benefit they get will be by accident
No. I think the NHL owners are among the most backwards looking in all of sports - Jacobs, Wirtz, et al. I said that I doubted that the owners had the foresight of Charley Finley to be able to even think in those terms - a far cry from "You seem to think the owners are smart enough to understand Finleys assertion ..."
Is there an NHLPA proposal where they asked to have the UFA age lowered? Surely they must be or you would have said the players never asked for that too as an unbiased media person.
I tried looking for the details of the PA proposals before writing my response. Sadly alot of the old CBA sources are drying up. The nhlcbanews archive is no longer accessable from NHL.com or nhlcbanews.com, but can by acecssed by direct URL. The CBA Central section is gone from andrewsstarspage.com.
With a bit more time and Google I was able to find the details of NHLPA Dec 9 proposal (
https://www.nhlpa.com/Proposal/PDFTransferFile.asp) and references to their Feb 14 and Feb 15 counter offers. In none of their offers do the NHLPA push for lower UFA ages. In their Dec 9 proposal, their only significant changes to free agency was a reduction in RFA QOs.
But given the PAs position - desperately trying to fight off a cap - they were in no position to be pushing demands in other areas.
Unbiased media person?????
You yourself i remember writing that piece of poodle pandering puffery at the end of the lockout celebrating the players total capitulation at the hands of the victorious owners. Now you want to suggest that the owners got everything except for this which they had to concede to the powerful players association or they would have gone back on strike?
I wrote a "piece of poodle pandering puffery" ??? Methinks you have me confused with someone else. Been practicing your alliteration much?
The owners did get everything they wanted - linkage, co-opting the PA's 24% rollback, and the "Triple Cap" (max player, team, and league wide caps) that the PA vowed they would never give. The PA pretty much capitulated, but they still needed a bone to throw to their membership. Somehow that 27yo UFA age ended up in final CBA and it certainly didn't come from the owners.
The players offered a rollback with no change in ufa age i believe. It was the owners who upon getting total capitulation, got everything they wanted. As you have previously pointed out.
For others to suggest that things arent working as good as they hoped now because Bettman didnt get everything he wanted is comedy gold jerry. Owners were never concerned with team building strategies, just 54% and leave the hassles to the GM's who largely dont seem to like it
I'm sure some owners were, but that was secondary to addressing the economic concerns which was GB's basic mission. And actually things are working about like I expected - maybe the owners are spending a bit more than I expected, but they have the safety net of the 54% Players Share, and the players are likely to get a rude escrow surprise at the end of the year.
And no I never beleived any claims that the CBA would lower ticket prices or make them "more affordable". Anyone with the most basic grasp of economics know that that was BS.
But despite what many in this thread claim, that was only a very small part of GBs and the NHLs arguments during the lockout.
The lockout was not to lower ticket prices. It was to fix a very broken and unsustainable economic system - and the new CBA does just that.
When the 3rd owners lockout comes, because like the previous 100 years of history the owners just cant afford the escalating salaries of arnitration, and they need to remove arbitration, guaranteed contracts, and free agency at all, i imagine owners will have everyones support once more.
Nice broad brush stroking there. Arbitration, like the lowered UFA age, is a zero sum game - it does not drive up total player costs. No one here (or anywhere I've seen) has seriously argued for non-guaranteed (NFL style) contracts or no free agency, but nice strawmen you have there.