richardn said:
Their last offer may have been high but it was fair and when originally offered it was used as a means for the NHL to come back with a better offer to meet the players half way. I don't think the NHLPA ever expected the NHL to take the 49 just at least talk about it. If Gary really wanted to save the season he would have negotiated right down to the minute with a deal so close. Goodnow should have picked up the phone as well but I believe they all felt the ball was in the NHL's court and they chose to cancel the season rather then negotiate.
First, I'm not trying to be a smart-ass.
Do you live at home, or do you support yourself? I assume it's the former, but I might be wrong.
Let's say you bring home $1,000 per month to pay the rent, and feed yourself. You are looking for an apartment. You see one you really like, that hasn't been rented in a LONG time, and the owner is asking for $1,200 per month. You start negotiating, and offer $800 per month, knowing that's all you can afford and still feed yourself. The landlord, who has no other options to rent out the apartment, tells you it's $1,000 per month, take it or leave it. In this case, you have to leave it because if you pay the rent, you're starving.
Do you get my point. The owners decided that it was more important to be able to eat (using my example above), than take the players deal. The players decided it's better to earn 10% of what they could in a capped NHL playing in Europe.
Everyone is giving Bettman a hard time for not going up to $45M or higher to get a deal done. I agree that the owners wouldn't let him go higher. But look at it differently. Assume there are 6 teams that would spend the extra money going from $42.5 to $49M. That's a total of $39M that the NHLPA would be collecting. Divide that by 690 players in the NHL, and it comes out to about $56,500 per year per player. The players shot down the deal that would have them earn an average of $1.3M per year over $56,500? The players career would have to be over 23 years long to make up missing one year's paycheck. Unless you're name is Mark Messier or Chris Chelios - it's a losing deal to not have taken their offer.
(I realize that you could also look at it from the owners standpoint - but it's all about what the small market owners were willing to have the discrepency between what they can afford, and what the cap limit was.)