go kim johnsson said:
Where were all of these guys back in February then? While it's "nice" to see guys like Esche and Roenick and Brisebois to come out now and say that they were wrong and should have accepted an offer a while ago, it's their own fault.
If all these guys would have spoken up back in January and February, not only would there have been a season, they would have had a deal they could at least live with as opposed to accepting an offer they want even less.
That was the time to speak up, not now. The players are just making themselves look worse.
i definitely agree. the owners had pretty much all the leverage from the beginning, just as the nature of the beast....with the profit sharing, retaining arbitration and guaranteed contracts, the february $42.5 deal was pretty reasonable, especially considering where we're going now.
of course the players had to know the longer this went on (especially if the season was cancelled) the more devalued the NHL would become and the less the owners would be able to offer.....if this is the case, the reps should have pressed the execs to atleast call for a vote to see how the membership stood. in this respect guys like roenick, esche and brisebois should have pressured linden to get it to a vote.
i think the NHLPA's ultimate downfall was not considering accepting the seemingly inevitable cap until it was too late and then getting stuck with it anyways. if they could have gotten out of the McCabe-esque mentality of 'no cap no matter what' and instead earlier tried to negotiate the best deal possible, they would have been in a lot better position to make more money and the game wouldn't have been so wounded.
the players were willing to make concessions (like the rollback, changes in qualifying offers and rookie deals), yet hindsight is showing they didn't look at the big picture and make the obvious one --a cap. worse, by taking one stance (never ever a cap) and crumbling on it in february by offering one they alienated alot of their base and lost even more leverage.