quat said:
So, in your example, a player breaks out after a maybe one or two years in the show, and he should immediately be valued at what? a minimum of five times his initial salary, or he's being ripped off? Even concidering the short length of a players carreer, paying this kind of player top dollar is absurd. What happened to proving yourself for years? Showing year in and year out that you can produce under the most difficult of situations... nope. One good year is enough to demand that you are paid at the top percentile of the league.
No, I said a player should be paid the same as a player of similar age, experience, performance, etc. He should be valued at his market value, not some artificial limiting factor. This market value may very well be 25% or less of an increase from his most recently salary. What you're arguing for is the ability for teams to lock a player into a 3-year deal at a 25% salary increase when his market value could and should be 5 times that. For example, Todd Bertuzzi would be making millions of dollars less than players who have performed similarly through his most recent platform season.
I think that is crap, and it only serves to make athletes more individuals and less team players.... but if players want the big money on their productive seasons, then they must be willing to lose the money money when they dont' produce. Arbitration has to exist for both management and players, or really, for neither.
Well, it can't exist for neither unless you want unrestricted free agency at the end of every contract. However, I have argued all along for two-way arbitration.
Now, I'm not saying there should be a cap on how big a raise a player should be able to demand, but anyone can see that the disparity in team wealth demands that there is some kind of system that will keep salaries in a reasonable percentage of revenue league wide.
I thought that's what you WERE arguing in your first paragraph? As for linking revenues with salaries, that is another tipic, but also completely absurd. As others have pointed out, this completely leaves players to the whim of NHL fortune and managerial marketing competence. If Bettman is unable to sign a TV deal due to his incompetence, or no one watches hockey in all of the crappy markets the NHL is in, players' salaries go down.
If you want to argue for a salary cap, that's one thing. But to link it to revenues on top of that is so absurd that I can't believe anyone who puts himself in the players' shoes for a second would think of it as at all reasonable.
The fact is players are not underpaid in any of the contracts the NHL has proposed, and for them to ignore how and why the problems exist, does them no service what so ever.
Relative to what are the players underpaid? Please, not another "doctors and teachers should make more" argument. The fact is, players are the product and generate billions of dollars for their employers; without players, there is nothing. They deserve a significant piece of the pie.
Saying no to fair negotiation, simply because you think you can squeeze a little more out is rather sad, but it certainly seems to be a position both sides are willing to take.
It's the NHLPA who has made the creative proposals thus far; all the owners have done is re-package completely non-starter issues several times. For them to expect an impasse declaration is a joke.