Word is that ECHL players will only be paid through tomorrow following the cancellation of their season. You have to feel for those guys: The average salary is a bit more than $600 per week in that league.
ECHLer shares reality of how cancelled season will impact players - Sportsnet.ca
Pretty weak that these guys paychecks stop so soon. I suppose that the AHL and NHL contracted players will still be paid for a while.
The PHPA must be a pretty lame union to settle for this. I'd think that the teams would at least pay them an extra week or two. If you subtract AHL and NHL contracts, the average team would be out somewhere between 20 and 30 grand for two extra weeks. The Cyclones just got a financial boon. They only have 2 regular season home games left and saved travel expenses for an extended trip to South Carolina and won't take a bath on the first two rounds (at least) of the playoffs. Probably added at least a hundred grand to their bottom line for the season.
Very disappointed in the league and the PHPA.
I'm disappointed for the players too. However, looking at both sides of it, every team is in a different situation. The Royals had 12 games left to play, five of them home games, but they would probably have been five of the top ten in attendance for the season. For a lot of teams the last month of home games is make or break, since they are losing money on the early season games when they are up against football, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. 20 players x 600 per week x 3 weeks is $36,000, and that's assuming your team is making the average. Every guy on an ECHL deal knows he can be released at any time, and gets three days severance plus travel reimbursement. I don't know that the union would have any leg to stand on to challenge it. I also have no idea how this would affect assigned players on AHL/NHL deals. If they pay the players they might be obligated to also pay the upper level teams for the assigned players as well. Maybe they could get the other leagues to agree to call everyone up before play was cancelled to avoid that?
All that said, it would be the stand up thing to do to pay the players until the end of the year. However there is a chance that some of the teams that were already losing money annually, who maybe lost 8 or more home games, and only had short one night road trips left are really taking a big hit on this. They may not be able to cancel the apartment leases and costs for office space and ice rental, etc may still have to be paid. This could easily be hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, depending on the individual schedules and situation. I wouldn't be surprised to see a team or two fold over this. Wouldn't be fair for some teams to pay guys and others not, so they had to make a league wide decision. The only alternative I could see would be to pool some money together between the teams who are better off and give some smaller payment to all the players, but the owners would have to trust each other to be honest in contributing to that fund what they could afford, and that might not be fairly done either.
Fans in our team facebook group were divided. Some expect full refunds for games that weren't played ASAP. Others were more inclined to let the team keep the money, either as a credit toward next season or altogether, if it would be the difference between the team staying or folding (or even running on a shoestring budget next year to make up the loss).
Maybe the league and the PHPA can get together some kind of gofundme page for the players, and have some owners and the union match what fans give to create a bonus pool for the players?