Smokescreen exposed

[Rageinthecage]

Bettman does need a system to protect the owners from each other. It's too bad he insults our intelligence by not admitting that the owners created their problems. However, the owners are not exactly "idiots" when running their respective franchises. The rich owners driving up salary expenses may be more or less negligent and disrespectful to the more unprofitable owners, but still running their own affairs reasonably. The fact is, if you had a seemingly unlimited budget as an owner (i.e. Rangers, Philly, Toronto, Detroit, etc), and faced internal pressure from your employees, shareholders, and especially fanbase, you will do whatever it takes to sustain a winning organization.

The rich teams can afford these ridiculous payrolls and in most examples (Rangers are a recent exception, Sather and his owner are idiots) still make excellent profits. Despite the PA's recent offer, the rich teams will offer the Palffy's and Demitra's of the league inflationary contracts that will once again force the other well-off teams to follow, and leave the small market teams unable to compete.

Goodenow is counting on the inflation and therefore won't "guarantee" the offer via linkage. As another poster mentions in this thread, any attempt by the owners to get together and attempt to manage this league in a more efficient manner is called collusion. Goodenow would be the first one lining up to file a complaint. He's not expecting the owners to take the PA proposal and fix their past mistakes. Quite the contrary, Goodenow is banking on the NHL to repeat the past and maintain the status quo.

I personally don't know enough about the ramifications of revenue sharing to know why the owners refuse to accept it (obvious reason of rich teams unwilling to share profits with poor teams notwithstanding). So the bottom line is like or not, the NHL are clearly in the driver's seat. The owners have deeper pockets and obviously have instructed Bettman to stand his ground indefinitely. The sooner that Goodenow realizes that he's finally lost to his counterpart for the first time ever, the sooner we can all watch NHL hockey again. The damage done in the interim may be devastating in some markets, but no more than the damage done to small market franchises eventually if the league accepts the recent PA offer.

 

[Kodiak]

Goodenow wants rich owners who spend liberally...in fact, the NHLPA needs these type of owners to escalate salaries that is why they do not want a cap. It is so easy to say that if GM's stick to their budgets then the owners can control costs. That is horse pucky!!!!

Toronto, let's speculate, has a budget of $80 million. Calgary, let's say, has a budget of $38 million. Vancouver has a budget of $50 million. And each of these owners/GM's stick to their budges. What is going to happen???

1) The big budgeted teams will "always" outbid the lower budget teams and thus drive up salaries. Calgary wants Iggy at $5 million but Toronto comes in and offers a huge $11 million dollar contract. Calgary loses franchise player and now Iggy's new salary is the new bar for his type of players throughout the league.

2) The lower budgeted teams will, in effect, be feeder teams for the big bugeted teams because they will not be able to afford their star players. Forget league parity.

Even with a 24% rollback, even with reverse arbitration, even with a luxury tax...bigger budgetted teams will always trounce the lower budgetted teams and drive up salaries. Goodenow counts on this happening.

Now, one could say that the league could get together to control the escalation of salaries...an internal memo (that hopefully would not get leaked) stating that the league supports an internal budget cap for every team...they could do that...except for the fact it's illegal...it's called collusion.

The only way the NHL is going to be able to survive is with a salary cap type system. It has nothing to do with owners/GM's policing themselves.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it assumes the big, small, and medium budgetted have always been so and will always be so. In actuality, there are only 2 teams that I would say are guaranteed to always be able to afford a big budget--the Leafs and the Rangers. For everyone else, the budget is linked to the team's level of success. Colorado, Dallas, Detroit--these are the other "big budget" teams ruining the league. But Colorado was not considered a viable hockey market until a winning team was placed there. If that wasn't true, then we wouldn't have a team in New Jersey. And do you think Dallas would have cared about the Stars if they were basement dwellers? Texans are usually a hockey mad bunch. And Detroit had their own problems with attendance before they were putting up 100 pt seasons and winning Stanley Cups regularly.

My point is this: fans turn out for a winner. That in turn generates more revenue, which allows for a larger budget. When a team builds a core and starts winning, most of the time that will allow for a higher budget. Colorado and Detroit will have to shrink their budgets as their core declines and attendance dwindles. Tampa will be able to pay more as they keep winning (that is, if the lockout didn't kill all their momentum with the fans). I'm not denying that there are some markets that have good fan support and are genuinely in trouble. That's why I'm in favor of revenue sharing and a luxury tax. But I'll never understand why so many are in favor or bringing the teams down a level instead of trying to raise the struggling teams up a level.

 

[Hockey_Nut99]

Can´t you see the diffrence for the players if they play in a league with a hard cap where all teams basically have the same salary budget?
Can you explain to me what offer will work if the people who are in charge and run the buiz don´t want it to work?
There are no proof that a league where all teams have the same salary won´t be a disaster for the players. Will 3-4 players on each team be
extremly highliy paid while the rest gets around 900k to 1200k? Where have Bettman showed that this won´t be the case?
Bettman has a teribble terribble record in the league.

We won't really know until it's tried out but it has to run better than the system that was in place last.

I was hoping we would hear a response that actually addressed this point, but not suprisingly... no.
No, it's all got to be about fake numbers and they aren't negotiating our proposal. Well Bob... your proposal didn't include much of
anything the NHL has said was most important.

Exactly! He didn't address it properly. Instead, Bob just said the numbers were a lie. Good one Bob.

oh, I should meantion that it is a huge PR hit to the union as well. If they say that everyone should be taxed the same then
they are not looking after the main body of their members but only the rich. The union has made a mistake with the 24% rollback and are being taken for
a ride now.

Everyone knows the rich guys are just looking out for themselves. One of the players(I think it was Shawn Burke) said he would rather have
5 teams go out the window to save this season. This was last night. Really ahows you how together the union is hey? How can they even call
themselves an association? pathetic.

Why would they need a cap when they can just not overpay players. Everyone thinks this league needs a salary cap, what they really need are
people who know what the hell they're doing. The market value is set by the people who dole out the money, not by a salary cap. All that
says is that there are 30 people who don't know how to run a business properly. And it is totally lame to use my own catch phrases against
the person who uses them so just don't do it, it's not cool.

It's so easy for everyone to say this. This lockout is about creating an even playing field as well. There are some owners who have an endless amount of money to spend. To them, paying guys 8 million isn't hurting those specific owners but it is hurting the rest of the league. I think it's pretty rude to say 30 guys don't know what they are doing. If an owner has a 80 million dollar payroll, has a GM
who is paying players huge bucks, and the team is still making money then does he not know what he's doing? The fact is that when Detroit or Dallas pay a player it drives up the market value of everyone else. I don't think the GM's think "Oh geez if I pay Weight 8.5 million then Nashville won't be able to sign player X who has the same numbers as Weight"...Obviously the GM won't think this because he is running a team to compete with all the other teams so they can win the Stanley Cup and create more revenue and profit. This competitive nature is creating out of control salaries and an uneven playing field. There needs to be restaints made.

I hate when people say "Oh what about Calgary or what about Tampa"?...Calgary made a Cinderella run this year. What about the last 7 years where they lost money? Everyone says Tampa is a low payroll team but you watch in a few years when everyones contracts run out. Lets see who they can actually keep there. They are a low payroll team becasue of the timing of their star players contracts.

 

[rt]

is backed by a group of the richest people in the world.

I'm pretty sure most NHLPA members would also qualify as top 5%, as far as richest people in the world go.

 

[Hockey_Nut99]

I'm pretty sure most NHLPA members would also qualify as top 5%, as far as richest people in the world go.

HAHAHAAAAA are you seriousssss!!!! They are like little bugs compared to the owners. Some of them are Billionaires!!! The owners can farrr outwait the players. Even the richest players probably have no money compared to the owner at #30...

I don't know the financial figures for all the owners. Now that i think of it maybe some owners (like the Edmonton Investors) don't have has much as guys like Forsberg but I don't know all the companies they run or what they even have.