Tawnos said:
Nice dose of BS from the pro-owner yahoos once again.
Seriously, every meeting's outcome was "we can't go any further than this" from the owners' side. And when they made even a little progress towards a compromise, Bettman was the one who chewed out Daly for it.
And here's an interesting point that's basically been alluded to:
If one deal has a $42m cap, 75% q offers, mirror arbitration and UFAs at 30, is that a better deal than $38m cap, 100% q offers, two-way arbitration that favors the PA and UFAs at 28?
Linkage might be a win for the owners, along with the rollback... but if enough of the other stuff favors the players, then the players win as well.
Oh come one! The players have been KILLED all around. Try and spin it any way you want, but ANY improvement from the February offer is irrelevant, as Bobby G was not going to allow the document to be signed come hell or high water. The only document you can guage victory on is from the last CBA and the structures it was based on. So in short lets look at the mechanisms you toss out as measures and see how things unfolded, PERIOD.
Cap... Last CBA there wasn't one. This CBA there is one, at the $38 million level (or 54% of revenues) and it comes with a tax too boot, starting at $35 million (or 50 percent of revenues). Half of the teanms were over this level last time hockey was played, so it obvious how this will affect the league.
Winner: NHL, BIG TIME
Floor... Last CBA there wasn't one. This CBA there is one, interestingly the floor is $24 million which is only 34% of revenues. Only three teams were below this level, and not by huge amounts of money. Compared to the money being dropped this is a scratch of the surface.
Winner: NHLPA, but marginally
Linkage... Last CBA there wasn't any. This CBA there is direct linkage and it appears that the numbers are pretty obvious. The maximum is 54% of revenues. It will be interesting to see if this number floats or if it is the hard number as suggested.
Winner: NHL, BIG TIME
Qualifying offers... Last CBA ALL players under league average required a 110% qualifier. Now that has been trimmed down to only players making less than $1 million. So the league average salary (which was $1.8 million) will have to drop by almost 50% before a similar environment will present itself for the players. The NHL just stopped having to guarantee a whole bunch of players raises they likely did not earn.
Winner: NHL, but marginally
Arbitration... Last CBA the players were the ones that got to use arbitration to their advantage. Now its a double edged sword. The teams arbitration rights are limited, but only by the fact that they can only hit a player once with it while he remains with that team. Not a big deal if a player becomes a UFA at 28. But the bottom line here is that the NHL teams NOW have arbitration rights, something they did not have prior to this agreement.
Winner: NHL, but marginally
UFA... Last CBA it was 30. Now it will drop to 28 after being phased in during the deal. Time will see if this is really an advantage or not. With the inclusion of the cap and the tax it may prevent the big salaries from even happening again. But as it sits, its a benefit to the players.
Winner: NHLPA
Rollback... Final kicker. 24% across the board.
Winner: NHL, BIG TIME