i dont know whats dumber

[Brent Burns Beard]

whats dumber,

- the fact that the players waited all this time to offer a cap when it could have been done earlier
- if the players had refused to give in to the concept
- the NHL didnt set a deadline for January, which would have resolved this issue a month ago

both sides made tactical errors, but i have to say the players really put themselves in a no win position. if they were prepared to offer a cap, why did they wait until they lost 1billion dollars ! if they were so sure of hteir position, why are they changing their minds ?

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[Reilly311]

your thread is pretty dumb. It's called negotiating.

 

[CRAZY_FAN]

your thread is pretty dumb. It's called negotiating.

Exactly !

 

[joepeps]

whats dumber,

- the fact that the players waited all this time to offer a cap when it could have been done earlier
- if the players had refused to give in to the concept
- the NHL didnt set a deadline for January, which would have resolved this issue a month ago

both sides made tactical errors, but i have to say the players really put themselves in a no win position. if they were prepared to offer a cap, why did they wait until they lost 1billion dollars ! if they were so sure of hteir position, why are they changing their minds ?

it's called makeing an offer so that an impase is near impossible to get on the owners side.

 

[likea]

the owners got their cap...how can you say they made an error

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

your thread is pretty dumb. It's called negotiating.

you call 5 months of hardline stance negotiating ? they only started negotiating in the face of a deadline.

if the NHL had set the deadline earlier, it would have been resolved earlier. however, im saying the players are the dumb ones anyhow. if they were prepared to offer a cap, what the hell took them so long ?

they could have offered a 52m cap in October and negotiated then. why wait until you have lost 1 billion dollars ?

its as dumb as thinking the owners would cave on the issue.

so whats dumber ?

dr

 

[Anksun]

not dumb at all.

Pretty questions to me.
Of course it's call negociations, but would the players agree to a cap sooner. They would play hockey right now for far more money...

To me, they look like a poker player who dont know when to folded when the bluff is call by the other side. And right now, it looks like they waited after the river with a lot of money drop on the table...

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

the owners got their cap...how can you say they made an error

they could have set the deadline a month or so ago. by not setting the deadline it might cost the season.

although, i see your point. it they set a deadline of Jan 8, they would be on the hook for that much more salary.

dr

 

[Pepper]

whats dumber,

- the fact that the players waited all this time to offer a cap when it could have been done earlier
- if the players had refused to give in to the concept
- the NHL didnt set a deadline for January, which would have resolved this issue a month ago

both sides made tactical errors, but i have to say the players really put themselves in a no win position. if they were prepared to offer a cap, why did they wait until they lost 1billion dollars ! if they were so sure of hteir position, why are they changing their minds ?

For the 10th time, a deadline in january would have put Bettman in a very bad position, first of all a jan 15th deadline wouldn't have been credible since everyone knows how long a 28-game season takes, also Bettman would have looked like a fool by moving that deadline further.

This is how negotiations work when both play hardball.

 

[kremlin]

your thread is pretty dumb. It's called negotiating.

Your reply is pretty dumb. The negotiations between the NHL and PA have been so unconventional, that I wouldn't even call it negotiating. In all honesty, the labour dispute could have been resolved in weeks, not months, if the two parties would have actually negotiated. Sure, using the media and keeping silent is a negotiating tactic, but not one that lasts for months.

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

For the 10th time, a deadline in january would have put Bettman in a very bad position, first of all a jan 15th deadline wouldn't have been credible since everyone knows how long a 28-game season takes, also Bettman would have looked like a fool by moving that deadline further.

This is how negotiations work when both play hardball.

fine ... so whats dumber

- the players losing a billion dollars for no reason ?
- if today the players had still not given in to a cap ?

do you get what i am saying ? id be calling the players stupid today if they were still saying "no cap ever" and i am calling them stupid for losing a billion dollars for something they are willing to accept anyhow.

dr

 

[SENSible1*]

It's called horrible leadership and it should cost Goodenow his job.

Marvin Miller was right.

"There's nothing more disastrous for the future of a labour organization and its members than enduring a long stoppage, then folding," Miller said.

"You can take almost anything except that because you lose on both fronts."

 

[Drake1588]

The players probably wanted to test the resolve of the owners. Going into the lockout they had their experience of ten years ago to go on, and that time the owners caved. That didn't happen this time. Oh well. Worth a shot, if the payoff is another ten years under the same system. That was probably the prevailing mindset. Didn't pan out.

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

It's called horrible leadership and it should cost Goodenow his job.

Marvin Miller was right.

at this stage, cant say i disagree .... a big miscalculation on his part.

dr

 

[likea]

I don't think it was the deadline that made the players cave

I think it was Roenick and the other players putting pressure on Goodenow

I don't think the players were ready in Jan. to accept a cap so Goodenow would have let the season slip away....

the owners up the offer to 42 million on Feb 2nd...that got the players saying we can live with a payroll range of 32-42 million as long as their is no linkage

I don't think that would have happened in Jan.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

at this stage, cant say i disagree .... a big miscalculation on his part.

dr

Though it pains me to say, I have to slightly disagree. Damn, I hate sticking up, even slightly, for that buffoon Goodenhow. However, you can not always judge entirely negotiations by the results. However strange that sounds. You sometimes have to test the other side to see how solid they are in their position first. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. However, in this case, I give only slight modification to outright derision for him, I think that even a three year old could see once the owners granted the basic veto power to only eight teams the resolve of the owners. I am not sure after a period of time what the players thought would happen, the writing was pretty well on the wall. However do you cave immediately? Perhaps not, but you certainly do not hold from the Cap concept for so long.

If I were handling the negotiations I would have tested the owners in other ways such as seeing that the Cap was likely to happen, but once accepted I would bet that the owners might fracture on other issues that the union will never get now. Sort of like the Germans in WWI went around the maginot line, the strength of France, go around the Cap, and hit the owners where they are not united. Now that opportunity is far more lost than it would have been five months ago.

 

[Brent Burns Beard]

Though it pains me to say, I have to slightly disagree. Damn, I hate sticking up, even slightly, for that buffoon Goodenhow. However, you can not always judge entirely negotiations by the results. However strange that sounds. You sometimes have to test the other side to see how solid they are in their position first. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. However, in this case, I give only slight modification to outright derision for him, I think that even a three year old could see once the owners granted the basic veto power to only eight teams the resolve of the owners. I am not sure after a period of time what the players thought would happen, the writing was pretty well on the wall. However do you cave immediately? Perhaps not, but you certainly do not hold from the Cap concept for so long.

If I were handling the negotiations I would have tested the owners in other ways such as seeing that the Cap was likely to happen, but once accepted I would bet that the owners might fracture on other issues that the union will never get now. Sort of like the Germans in WWI went around the maginot line, the strength of France, go around the Cap, and hit the owners where they are not united. Now that opportunity is far more lost than it would have been five months ago.

i fail to see how the test was worth 1 billion dollars.

 

[Steve L*]

i fail to see how the test was worth 1 billion dollars.

It wasnt, Goodenow bet over 1 billion dollars of the players money on the owners folding, he flat out lost and thats proved by the players going behind his back to try and get a deal.

Ive said all along the players should have said theyd accept a cap in the summer and negotiate before the season started.

Then, collectively they are well over a billion dollars richer and the league is in better shape so they are more likely to get a higher cap!

As every day passed, the deal they were going to get was going to get worse.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

i fail to see how the test was worth 1 billion dollars.

I do not disagree. What I am saying is that the concept of testing the resolve of the other side is very valid, if done wisely. And sometimes you lose in that testing, but compromising for less without testing the other side is a loss too. In this case I would have tested the owners five months ago, especially when I had the cards in hand of almost a complete season of revenues that the owners could earn under a Cap, but gone hard after other areas that would be important to the players. Maybe lowering UFA age signigicantly. The point is that Goodenhow did indeed play this very badly, but if he had played it slightly differently even losing a billion in revenues could have been justified by other gains. In this case he ended up with nothing but caving.

 

[wazee]

whats dumber,

- the fact that the players waited all this time to offer a cap when it could have been done earlier
- if the players had refused to give in to the concept
- the NHL didnt set a deadline for January, which would have resolved this issue a month ago

both sides made tactical errors, but i have to say the players really put themselves in a no win position. if they were prepared to offer a cap, why did they wait until they lost 1billion dollars ! if they were so sure of hteir position, why are they changing their minds ?

I think the pace of this negotiation was set by the player's big win in the 1994-95 negotiations. The NHLPA won big the last time by refusing to negotiate and waiting until the owners caved. Last time the owners caved in early January. That meant that nothing would be done until mid-January at the earliest. The players would not offer anything realistic before that time because their strategy of waiting the owners out had worked so well before. The owners could not offer anything because the players would see it as repeating history.

So the game did not really begin until mid-January. It took a few more weeks for the players to realize that this time was different and the owners were not going to cave. Had the owners set a deadline earlier, the players would have continued to think this negotiation was going to follow the rules of the previous one which would have been counter-productive from the owner's point of view.

As to why the players caved and accepted a salary cap when they could have done so last summer and avoided all this...they obviously thought they would win.

For years I have been saying the players would trade a cap for a lower UFA age. The only question was, how much of the season would they waste getting to that point...

 

[CRAZY_FAN]

I think the pace of this negotiation was set by the player's big win in the 1994-95 negotiations. The NHLPA won big the last time by refusing to negotiate and waiting until the owners caved. Last time the owners caved in early January. That meant that nothing would be done until mid-January at the earliest. The players would not offer anything realistic before that time because their strategy of waiting the owners out had worked so well before. The owners could not offer anything because the players would see it as repeating history.

So the game did not really begin until mid-January. It took a few more weeks for the players to realize that this time was different and the owners were not going to cave. Had the owners set a deadline earlier, the players would have continued to think this negotiation was going to follow the rules of the previous one which would have been counter-productive from the owner's point of view.

As to why the players caved and accepted a salary cap when they could have done so last summer and avoided all this...they obviously thought they would win.

For years I have been saying the players would trade a cap for a lower UFA age. The only question was, how much of the season would they waste getting to that point...

This is exactly why we are where we are now, great post this sums it up perfectly. This should finally help anyone who still think offers should have been made earlier. This is just a negotiation and the only framework that the players had was the 1994 negotiation in which the owners caved !

 

[transplant99]

whats dumber,

- the fact that the players waited all this time to offer a cap when it could have been done earlier
- if the players had refused to give in to the concept
- the NHL didnt set a deadline for January, which would have resolved this issue a month ago

both sides made tactical errors, but i have to say the players really put themselves in a no win position. if they were prepared to offer a cap, why did they wait until they lost 1billion dollars ! if they were so sure of hteir position, why are they changing their minds ?

Thats the very question that Bob Goodenow is going to have to answer from his bosses...the players.

He is in big trouble me thinks.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

Thats the very question that Bob Goodenow is going to have to answer from his bosses...the players.

He is in big trouble me thinks.

The rumblings have started already:


"We probably could've gotten this thing done in the summertime," Chicago forward Matthew Barnaby said. "Am I mad, no? I want to get back to work. But at the same time, I'm just a little disappointed that it went this far to play poker and to have someone call your bluff."

The 24 percent rollback on all existing contracts, originally offered by the union on Dec. 9, as well as more aggressive luxury tax rates and thresholds, were included in the players' counteroffer.

Buffalo Sabres player representative Jay McKee was surprised Tuesday when he heard the union would accept a cap.

"If that's where we were going, I wonder why now," he said.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/sports/21505-hockey.html

 

[tantalum]

Absolutely baffles me how in the dark the players are in all of this including the player reps! To not know all the details is fine but to not have a clue even in broad strokes what your union leadership is willing to negotiate is odd. It seems the PA leadership was intentionally misleading it's members and giving out false promises and misinformation. It's one thing to do that to the media and instruct players to do the same it is quite another to do this to your own membership. I have to believe the bulk of the leadership, predominantly those who have made the big money, is not going to make it through this.

 

[Slapshot17]

You can only understand how serious the other side is by hardline negotiation. Bettman could not back down this time after losing the last Lockout. I think the sense that both sides are serious in the positions is truly there, and only by the deadline coming now, and the realization that their 2.1 billion dollar pie is getting smaller, are they both finally making concessions. It's common Collective bargaining procedure. In other industries however, owners nor employees usually have the means to hold out for as long as these two sides.