SSJTOM said:
Again the triggers were for the 05/06 season not the current one, no triggers would have been immediate.
as for pro-owner/pro-player I couldn't care less about either side, I'm pro-hockey.
Wrong. The triggers were negotiable, the PA could have come back with revamped triggers to guarentee their numbers.
They declined to do so because they knew full well that they could not guarentee to 100% certinty that their proposal would work, and I can't blame them for that no one knows how any implemented CBA is going to pan out over the years.
however the base deal was still their deal and they could have altered the triggers to be more favourable to them.
Like it or not they rejected their own proposal
I have never seen any actual written account that the triggers magically would be ignored until 2005-06. Even if that is the case, they would still be triggered automatically, so the owners proposal would be in place come 2005-06.
The flaw, if you could call it that, with the NHLPA proposal was that it was only a framework. A set of tools to decrease salaries and keep them there. It would have relied on a bunch of owners to not be idiots, and that, of course, is not acceptable to the owners, who more or less admit that they are in fact unable to control themselves. It was not an idiot-proof system. The NHL wants and says it needs a system that is completely idiot-proof.
The PA proposal was never set up to ensure that every team spent between $x and $y, or that payrolls were only w% of total revenues. So to slap on triggers to force it to actually be the owners proposal is ridiculous.
Any type of trigger would and could be achieved through actions by the owners and only the owners, the power to trigger the switch would have been solely in their hands, no matter what the triggers were. Negotiate all you want, the end result would still be the same, and that's the owners system being implemented.
Can we finally put to rest the notion that the players rejected their own proposal? Of all the lies and half-truths during this whole process, this is the King.
What happens now if the players come back and "accept" the $37.5M cap proposal, but put in a trigger that, if any team spends under $36.5M or the Stanley Cup is won by any team with an "S" in its name, or any team uses a goalie from Quebec, then the PA proposal is implemented? Who here would applaud the players for this? Who would scorn the owners for "rejecting their own proposal"? Who would want Gary to negotiate the triggers?