But where's the compromise? Where?
The players union offered owners a 24-percent pay reduction. What were the objectives of the owners?
One of the NHL's goals in a new contract was to chop $380 million off its player costs. That's fact, exactly what a top league executive told The Eagle-Tribune in early November.
With a 24-percent payroll cut, based on the league's own salary numbers from the 2002-03 season, that amounted to slashing $336 million. If the league simply agreed to add a significant payroll tax, the projected savings would have been more than $400 million.
They had already reached their goal.
But no, they had to keep this fight going.
Dug in for a battle
Both sides have had their feet stuck in cement. Nobody wanted to crack it to get free.
Bettman's complete unwillingness to get away from his "cost certainty" salary cap is unacceptable. Nothing is certain in this world.
.......
The issue of trust has become an absolute disaster with good reason.
While well intended, longtime top-echelon executives want to see a "partnership" with players in a new agreement, some claim that the trust factor is a red herring. There's a fishy smell, no doubt about that.
That Levitt Report, touted by Bettman as "a superaudit" showing $273 million in league-wide losses, wasn't an audit at all.
Consider two form reports obtained by The Eagle-Tribune that were addressed to the NHL about certain information in the Levitt Report, before the league announced it over a year ago. They are tucked in the back of the report.
Included in both, clearly written, is this explanation:
"We were not engaged to, and did not, perform an audit the objective of which would be the expression of an opinion on the specified elements, accounts or items. Accordingly, we did not express such an opinion. Had we performed additional procedures, other matters might have come to our attention that would have been reported to you."
There's nothing like documentation. Look at the words -- "did not perform an audit."
No wonder Arthur Levitt himself, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, called it an "independent review."
But somehow the commissioner publicly turned the report into "a superaudit" and everybody took it as the gospel for nearly 10 months. It wasn't what it was cracked up to be. Why bother enhancing it?
Shame on that propaganda pitch that cost the league $1 million.