Did the NHLPA drop the ball?

[txpd]

think wild posts..."You are pretty sure that if Boston had kept Guerin and Allison, they would have suceeded where LA and Dal failed? They did pretty well without them for a while as I recall."

Did well in what regard? In the last 4 years, in the midst of allowing their star players to leave over salary issues, the Bruins ranked between 21st and 25th in the NHL in average home attendance. Think about that. The Boston Bruins 25th in a 30 team league in attendance in the state of the art Fleet Center. Bruin fans call them cheap. Curse them for letting those star players go and it shows in their attendance. The Red Wings and the Avalanche with $60m + payrolls never have fans complain about them being cheap and unwilling to be committed to win and never have attendance problems. I could be wrong, but didnt Dallas win the President's cup in 2002-03 with Guerin?

Thinkwild also posts, "For every team that loaded up like Det and Tor, there was a cheaper team, who didnt and had better success."
The basics of this cba have been in effect for 10 seasons. 9 of those seasons the Stanley Cup was won by a team in the top 10 in payroll. Once a team outside the top 10 won. That was this past season when it could be argued that the empending lockout caused all kinds of anomolies. Look at your poster teams. Calgary and Tampa Bay. In the last 8 seasons, those two teams made the playoffs 3 total times out of 16 chances. Detroit and Toronto never missed the playoffs in that period and Detroit won 3 cups alone. If you are going to try and argue that low budget teams can make a run at the cup, you can, but you can not argue that they can make any kind of sustained run. All of the odd teams that have made the finals in recent years, Florida, Washington, Carolina, and Anaheim missed the playoffs in the next season. Florida has not made the playoffs since. Neither has Carolina. You could make a case that Calgary could turn back into a pumpkin in the next NHL season and drop off the radar again.

 

[Tom_Benjamin]

pld, you aren't getting it. Many people don't. If the Rangers give a guy $5 million or Detroit gives a guy $5 million...every comparable player in that category wants the same cash. Those teams can afford the money, so in truth aren't doing anything wrong.

Can you name one single player the Rangers or Red Wings signed that affected the market? According to the latest, the Rangers can't afford the money. They lost more money than any other team.

And with the ridiculous arbitration system, agents use the highest paid comparable to achieve the best possible award. It is an inflationary system.(You can imagine the number of guys using Marty Lapointe as a comparable for arbitration. :lol )

Zero players used Marty Lapointe as a comparable. The CBA expressly excludes unrestricted free agents from the arbitration process.

So in effect, the problem doesn't lay with Holik getting a large contract because the Rangers can afford it...it is the salary pull on every other comparable player on every other team(Especially the lower revenue stream teams) that causes the problem.

The Rangers apparently can't afford it either but it doesn't affect any other team at all. There are no players who are comparable to Bobby Holik. No player agent tries to negotiate a contract based on Bobby Holik or any other player who has achieved free agency. A comparable player is a player who is a comparable age with comparable experience and comparable production over the course of that experience. The Carolina Hurricane freely chose to pay Jeff O'Neill $3.5 million. Radek Bonk used that contract in arbitration the following season.

Since he was quite similar, he won a similar salary. The year after, Brendan Morrison tried to use those players in arbitration two years ago. He lost despite similar numbers because the other two guys had been doing it longer, because Morrison probably got more help from his linemates, because O'Neill scored more goals, and because Bonk is better defensively.

The arbitrator accepted the Canuck argument on all counts and the award came in at exactly what the Canucks had offered. This did not stop the media from trumpeting the fact that Morrison had "won" a 300% raise!

Both seemed fair to me, although Morrison probably should have done better. The Canucks knew Brendan was winning this time around and voluntarily gave him $3.5 million. I have written arbitration briefs on players for a player agent. The process is not that hard to figure out. Arbitration awards do not set new standards. They follow contracts already signed by players. O'Neill set the bar for Bonk and Morrison.

I keep hearing about these outrageous awards based on New York spending, but nobody can ever provide any good examples. I can think of exactly one awful award, and the NHL promptly - and rightly in my view - fired the arbitrator. It is usually not hard to identify comparables and I'd wager most fans would agree with the arbitration award if we could read them.

I think the process works really well. It should eliminate holdouts entirely and hasn't, only because stupid player agents haven't realized that no player has won a holdout since Sergei Fedorov.

Tom

 

[pld459666]

When I refer to the term "no"

So why now should the owners (and fans, more importantly) be punished for the players' inability to say no to the owners' offer?

You're saying one thing's right, but the same thing from the other side is wrong. Why?

It's in reference to contract negotaitions, not the current CBA.

 

[Seachd]

It's in reference to contract negotaitions, not the current CBA.

Okay, but there's still no difference.

Now, (most of) the owners are saying, "No. We don't want to continue offering these ridiculous salaries."

The players are saying, "We don't accept that. We still want the big salaries."

Now that the GMs are saying no, the players still expect yes. But they have no right to.

 

[pld459666]

I could not disagree with this post more.

1. the 5% roll back was a one time roll back that would have been swallowed up immediately by the automatic salary increases that are part of the current cba. If arbitration and the automatic 10% increase for players under the league average are not removed(and they are not part of this offer), that 5% roll back is back in the players pocket by the next season.

The roll back was on all salaries from now until the end of their contracts. Holik, for instance, would have his annual salary reduced from 9 million to 8.5 million. And like I said since it was an initial offer, they probably would accept a bigger reduction.

2. when you say, "I don't understand why we have to take responsibility out of the owners hads for agreeing to some of these outrageous contracts". Lets keep in mind that by and large "the owners" are 3 to 5 owners that can afford to spend the rest of the teams under the table and another 3 to 5 owners willing to take a loss to try and compete on the ice to keep his franchise value and place in the local sports market high. the rest of the owners are along for the ride. the higher salaries go the less they can afford. As this current cba has evolved the top teams aquired a constantly increasing percentage of the marquee players while the bottom teams increasingly became a collection unknown players. Last year's stanley cup finals was a promoters disaster, Inginla and 20 no names verses, St Louis & Lecavalier and 18 no names.

The 3-5 teams you are referring to are problems no doubt, but they are problems to themselves as the players they seek to obtain are 31+ year old players. Since Iginla or St. Louis or Lecavalier cannot use a Holik contract as leverage in their own negotiating I assume you are talking about the small market team like Anaheim that plopped down 10 mill a year for Karyia? Or the Islanders handing Yashin what amounts to 2 5 year contracts worth 90 million?

3. "start blaming the current situation on the players for asking for as much as they want". Nobody is saying that. However, what they are saying is that the owners should be allowed to say that they have been paying too much and need to cut back. the players are saying, "hey!! you can't do that! you offered it and you have to keep paying it with a raise every year"

And if this summer has shown you anything, it's that the owners have been saying no and the contracts that have been signed for the most part, on average, have been lower than in years past. The exception to that rule is Toronto and we'll see how that turns out. Regardless of the circumstances the owners have the ability to say no and they are negotiating responsibly for the first time in years. I applaud them for their fiscal responsibility. All they need to do now is police themselves and stop looking to forcing a system that police's themselves on the players

4. "Isn't it still the owners responsibility to run their business making sound financial decisions?". When you say that do you forget about teams like Boston say they wont pay $8.5m to Bill Guerin and $7m to Jason Allison and then get cut to pieces by their fan base for not being willing to make a commitment to winning?
Are you forgetting about lower revenue teams like Edmonton that regularly trade off their best players as they mature into arbitration eligible players because they can no longer afford the new salaries they would get? For every team like Toronto and Detroit that is loading up with all stars with big contracts at the trade deadline there are two teams that simply have to give up their franchise players for draft picks and prospects because they can't or won't pay the outragious prices.

No I don't forget about the teams like Boston, and I feel for the teams like Edmonton, but if they are going to allow the players to take the hammer out of their hands then again it's their own fault. The fact of the matter is that the owners fought to have arbitration in this system, it's backfired on them due to other small market teams like Anaheim and the Islanders for some of the contracts that they have handed out. The Rangers made their bid for the RFA in Sakic a few years ago and we remember how that worked (and in all honesty may have beet the spark to start the fire). Colorado matched (wisely I might add). But Carolina, another small market team went after Feds with an offer that paid him 28 million in one year. Based on history it seems like the small market teams are more at fault for the current situation than are the bigger market teams like NYR, DET, PHI.

5.you are in a very distinct minority that believes that offer, which increased the luxury tax threshold from $40m to $50m, was a good offer.

Again, it's an offer that is deserving of consideration and more deserving of a counter offer. God forbid the owners take it upon themselves to be responsible for overstepping a specific threshhold. It's all part of negotiating, the owners could have easily said "Hey, the last offer was 40, we need to get back to that number" But guess what? that would mean that the owners would have to come out of pocket for anything above that threshold something that they are unwilling to do. Again, it's putting responsibility off on the players when they are not the ones fully responsible for the situation the NHL is in.


There's a happy medium, but in Bettman thinks that a cap is it, then he's wrong. The owners of teams like the Rangers and Capitals and Islanders and Anaheim and Carolina and Det are going to have to say that we agree that X is a number that we cannot exceed and we will not go above that. And if they do there should be stiff penalties in place. Here's where I have a problem with the players proposal, they are looking at a nominal 5% of every dollar over 50 million as a luxury tax. I'd say that it should be dollar for dollar on anything above the threshold, whatever that number would be agreed to. It, in and of itself, would more or less act as a cap as say the Rangers were working under that system this year, based on the protion of the season that they were way over the cap, they would have had to pony up an additional 20+ million (and that's at the 50 Million threshold) Det would be at 20+ million and the Flyers would be between 15-20 million themselves. Sh!t, even the small market Devils would have had to pay some taxes.

When all was said and done the league would have had to redistribute over 100million to the smaller market teams.

So here we are, for arguments sake, the League and Players agree to a 12% rollback on all salaries saving the league an immediate 200 million, Arbitration is eliminated and UFA is brought down to 29 or 30 years of age, the Luxury Tax threshold is set at 45 million and the penalty is dollar for dollar. We go into this next season, and the league would have anywhere between 50-100 million in Luxury Tax money to be re-distributed to the teams that are struggling financially.

just an opinion, but it seems like a system that could work if only the owners would take responsibility for their failings as business owners.

 

[pld459666]

Not true

Okay, but there's still no difference.

Now, (most of) the owners are saying, "No. We don't want to continue offering these ridiculous salaries."

The players are saying, "We don't accept that. We still want the big salaries."

Now that the GMs are saying no, the players still expect yes. But they have no right to.

And as evidenced this summer, most teams and players have agreed to contracts that were for less than last year with a very select few getting marginal raises.

Case in point, Weeks just had his best year and took a 1 million cut in salary.

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

pld, you aren't getting it. Many people don't. If the Rangers give a guy $5 million or Detroit gives a guy $5 million...every comparable player in that category wants the same cash. .

and what choice does the player have if the team says no ? no choice, except to not play hockey.

And with the ridiculous arbitration system, agents use the highest paid comparable to achieve the best possible award. It is an inflationary system.(You can imagine the number of guys using Marty Lapointe as a comparable for arbitration. :lol ).

players signed as UFA can not be used as comparables in arbitration

So in effect, the problem doesn't lay with Holik getting a large contract because the Rangers can afford it...it is the salary pull on every other comparable player on every other team(Especially the lower revenue stream teams) that causes the problem.

players signed as UFA can not be used as comparables in arbitration

 

[Seachd]

And as evidenced this summer, most teams and players have agreed to contracts that were for less than last year with a very select few getting marginal raises.

Case in point, Weeks just had his best year and took a 1 million cut in salary.

And tell me how often that happens. Give me a list of all the players who have taken paycuts after their career year, and then a list of those who demanded raises, and we'll compare.

Why don't the players agree to be paid based on revenue? I'm the only one who's given an answer to that question.

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

Why don't the players agree to be paid based on revenue? I'm the only one who's given an answer to that question.

1) because they are not accountants and shouldnt concern themselves with identifying what is revenue or not.

2) because they want to be paid what the owner is willing to pay them and not be held back by an artificial system.

dr

 

[Russian Fan]

1) because they are not accountants and shouldnt concern themselves with identifying what is revenue or not.

2) because they want to be paid what the owner is willing to pay them and not be held back by an artificial system.

dr

Everything you just said is true & to be maybe more explicit

1) NHL players are the sources of expense of an NHL franchise. They are not partners in any franchises nor when they signed a contract a % of the team have been given to them. All they've been asked is PERFORM.

2) Because players don't trust an owner that can easily with good management expand their profit while continuing tying the players salaries with a cap.

Since summer 2003 players is having a hard time getting ''great contracts'' à la John Leclair because the GM's are more aware of the situation. Do the players whine because Ziggy Palffy can get 9M$ ? nope because the free market in 2004 won't give Palffy or Demitra the M$ that was gived so freely in the past.

MLB situation : Alex Rodriguez got 250M$ for 10 years = 25,000,000$ / year

I remember the experts claiming that if there's one player that could get the 25M$ /year in baseball is Vladimir Guerrero. He turn down a 75M$/5 years for 15M$/year from the EXPOS because he thought he would receive WAY MORE from some teams.

Vladimir Guerrero finally sign a 65M$/ 5years contract for a 13M$/year contract.

Everybody thought Guerrero would have made 25M$ & he even lost 10M$ for refusing a contract before he was about to be a FREE AGENT.

This is what happens in the NHL TODAY !!!!

 

[Seachd]

2) Because players don't trust an owner that can easily with good management expand their profit while continuing tying the players salaries with a cap.

This only applies to some teams. Why are you ignoring the ones that can't keep up with these salaries?

 

[Russian Fan]

This only applies to some teams. Why are you ignoring the ones that can't keep up with these salaries?

I'm not ignoring them but did you more research as to WHY they can't keep up ? Also did you ask yourself is that important if I can't afford giving a player 9M$ a year because no one today wants to give 9M$ to a players.

If Calgary can afford Iginla @ 7,5M$ , everyone can afford salaries , as long as the team got a budget that respect it.

You calling me to ignore thing through when all you want is to save your team & you don't care for the rest of the world as long as your team is there.

 

[Seachd]

If Calgary can afford Iginla @ 7,5M$ , everyone can afford salaries , as long as the team got a budget that respect it.

That's not true, and it's quite a severe generalization.

You calling me to ignore thing through when all you want is to save your team & you don't care for the rest of the world as long as your team is there.

Yeah, you're right. I don't care about players when they're making tens times more than they should, and won't play unless they get more.

 

[RangerBoy]

The NHL is a local market revenue driven league.The NBA and NFL are mostly national revenue driven leagues.The NHL has no national revenue coming from TV.That is the problem.Blame Gary Bettman and his cronies for that.They took a sport on the verge of breaking out ten years ago and locked out the players which destroyed any momentum the NHL had ten years ago

The big market teams make more money than the smaller market teams which is sometimes reflected in their payrolls.Of course,some big market teams which play in new buildings(Boston,Chicago and LA)operate their teams like small market teams.MLB has revenue sharing.Why doesn't Bettman get a revenue sharing deal with HIS owners instead of asking the players?Are the big market U.S. teams and Toronto willing to share their revenue with the small market teams?

 

[Guest]

One expression I've always loved is "you are only as strong as your weakest link", and I think it very much applies to today's NHL. You could argue that the weaklings of the NHL should be removed and it'd make the overall product stronger, it probably would in some cases, but that isn't to debat right now. Something has to be done so that the strongest team and weakest team are essentially on the same footing, they have equal chances at success although the stronger team may have far superior management.

I'm not a follower of the hard cap, because I think the owners are trying to hardline that in for their own benefit, but some type of considerable cap has to be put in place, or the only other solution is revenue sharing. If the Rangers can afford to sign a guy like Holik, the Bruins can afford to sign a contract like Lapointe's, and others out there, then Nashville - Carolina - Edmonton - etc have to be able to do the same thing. Again, unless you eliminate the perceived weak links, it must be done for the health of the league.

I do buy that the majority of the losses are probably coming from just a fraction of the league, and I'd suspect that there is not as much solidarity amongst ownership on the issue of cutting losses as there is about making more money. The current system doesn't work, and if you want to save those 6 or so teams that aren't cutting it, something has to change. Otherwise the "weakest link" in the chain is broke, and so does the league to some degree.

 

[Winger98]

One expression I've always loved is "you are only as strong as your weakest link", and I think it very much applies to today's NHL. You could argue that the weaklings of the NHL should be removed and it'd make the overall product stronger, it probably would in some cases, but that isn't to debat right now. Something has to be done so that the strongest team and weakest team are essentially on the same footing, they have equal chances at success although the stronger team may have far superior management.

I'm not a follower of the hard cap, because I think the owners are trying to hardline that in for their own benefit, but some type of considerable cap has to be put in place, or the only other solution is revenue sharing. If the Rangers can afford to sign a guy like Holik, the Bruins can afford to sign a contract like Lapointe's, and others out there, then Nashville - Carolina - Edmonton - etc have to be able to do the same thing. Again, unless you eliminate the perceived weak links, it must be done for the health of the league.

I do buy that the majority of the losses are probably coming from just a fraction of the league, and I'd suspect that there is not as much solidarity amongst ownership on the issue of cutting losses as there is about making more money. The current system doesn't work, and if you want to save those 6 or so teams that aren't cutting it, something has to change. Otherwise the "weakest link" in the chain is broke, and so does the league to some degree.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post, but I don't see why teams have to be on equal footing, despite one having better management than the other, unless you're talking about on a purely financial level. If a team is badly managed, they deserve to fail. If Holik was signed for that kind of money on nearly any other team, and it would nearly cripple them, and deservedly so.

This is part of the reason I'm in favor of a luxury tax, rather than a cap. If a team wants to spend stupidly, let them. They'll be penalized with the tax and more responsible teams would benefit with a bit of extra cash to invest in their own products.

 

[Tom_Benjamin]

Why don't the players agree to be paid based on revenue? I'm the only one who's given an answer to that question.

Because player costs should be a variable, not a fixed cost. It is ridiculous to suggest that the successful teams, the high revenue teams, would be paying the same percentage of their revenue to players as unsuccessful teams. They don't. It will be a higher percentage. It is ridiculous to suggest that the same revenue split is appropriate for a $1.5 billion industry or a $2.5 billion industry.

The owners are not guaranteeing the player share. They are capping the player share. If revenues have stopped growing, the player share will stop too. If revenues actually fall, one would expect the player percentage of those revenues to fall too. We certainly see that happening with individual teams as their revenue fluctuates. This is right and proper. The fixed costs have to be covered. The players will get a larger and larger share of the rest of those revenues as those revenues increase.

That's the way it should work. The owners want to convert the variable cost to a fixed cost too. Even if the negotiated split is equitable for revenues of $2 billion, it will definitely not be equitable if revenue rises to $2.2 billion. The owners want to assure a profit when revenues are down and very fat profits when revenues are up.

Tom

 

[Tom_Benjamin]

One expression I've always loved is "you are only as strong as your weakest link", and I think it very much applies to today's NHL. You could argue that the weaklings of the NHL should be removed and it'd make the overall product stronger, it probably would in some cases, but that isn't to debat right now.

Why not? Maybe it is the best thing. Most hockey fans would vote for a 24 team league as long as their team was a survivor. I'm not in favour of contraction. I'm in favour of letting the turkeys go bankrupt. What do I care whether Disney loses some money. They've got lots. Either the fans turn out or they don't. The business goes bankrupt or it doesn't.

Something has to be done so that the strongest team and weakest team are essentially on the same footing, they have equal chances at success although the stronger team may have far superior management.

This is pretty much as I see it. No one has made a convincing argument that the league has competitive balance problems.

I do buy that the majority of the losses are probably coming from just a fraction of the league, and I'd suspect that there is not as much solidarity amongst ownership on the issue of cutting losses as there is about making more money.

The six teams that are supposedly not cutting it are the New York Rangers, Washington Capitals, St. Louis Blues and (likely in my view) New York Islanders, Florida and Carolina. The first three teams are the so-called irresponsible spenders who have supposedly driven up salaries for everyone! The market is punishing them and should punish them into responsibility. That is not evidence of a strutural problem. It is an example of teams getting their just desserts. The Islanders will lose money on any CBA until they get a new rink.

The current system doesn't work, and if you want to save those 6 or so teams that aren't cutting it, something has to change. Otherwise the "weakest link" in the chain is broke, and so does the league to some degree.

Do you really think we need a new CBA to save the Rangers, Capitals, Blues and Islanders? It doesn't make much sense to me.

There is no chain. What kind of analogy is that? If a team folds or relocates, the league does not break. If either Carolina or Florida folds it will be because hockey did not sell in the market. If that happens, the owners will be getting their just desserts for making a bad investment.

What - besides a few really old and greedy rich men - is the problem?

Tom