CarlRacki said:
Tom,
I completely understand the players' position and can't honestly say I would act differently if I were in their skates. However, IMO, this sacrifice you speak of is a short-term one being made because they fully expect it to result in a long-term gain. That's what the 24 percent rollback was all about. The players would take a short hit (one to two years for most) in order to keep in place a system that saw their salaries grow more than 300 percent over the past decade. Most of the players - except perhaps the guys in their mid to late 30s - would recover their losses from the rollback within a few years and then start reaping the benefits of the same system as they had for the prior decade.
This is flat out wrong. The arithmetic does not work. Even if we accept the ridiculous NHL position that salaries would zoom back within two years, there is no way the players can recover $1.3 billion. None. Zip. Zero. Haven't owner apologists used this argument to explain why the players would have to give it up?
And in fact, the 230 players who make above the league average make nearly 70% of the $1.3 billion and most of those players are over 30 and on the downside of their careers. These players are getting killed financially. Plus, they can see the end of the career coming. That's almost worse for them. They are losing a year of playing hockey they can never get back.
There is absolutely no doubt that if Mats Sundin - and the 230 other veterans leading the player association - followed their own self interest, we have hockey. This is the reason the players are so difficult to break. They are not acting selfishly. They
know they are acting against self interest.
As you say, it would be hardest for the guys with only a few years left in their careers, but for the most part these are the same guys who received the most benefit from the prior system. So, they're sacrificing a little to save a system that brought them disproportionate wealth.
Yes, but they've already got their benefit from the existing system. These are the players who are leading the players. They are sacrificing
a lot to maintain the system
for the players who come after them. They think the next generation should get the same benefit. Other paid the price to make them rich and now it is their turn. Right or wrong, it is a selfless act on their part.
1) I think it's a loser. I might be proven wrong, but to me it seems the owners hold the stronger hand in this game and will eventually win.
Maybe. The owners have the financial strength, but these veteran players are millionaires who seem prepared to to sacrifice now for the generations of players who come after. Unless that changes, the owners can't win. Maybe it will change.
Just don't call them selfish or greedy because they are definitely not behaving in a selfish way or a greedy way. They are doing this because they feel obligated. They got very rich because, in 1994, the veterans made the same sacrifice for them. The quid pro quo is that ten years from now, Brad Richards and Vincent Lecavalier will make the sacrifice again.
That is a tough position for the owners to break. I'm not saying they won't break it, but if you think we are going to see the players cave this year so we get hockey, I think you are nuts. Baseball players and hockey players play it this way, and as a result, have won every strike or lockout they've ever fought. The senior basketball players did not see it the same way and gave the owners what they wanted.
It would seem to me that the ultimate self-interest of the players should rest in the good of their sport, not the good of their wallets. If the sport is relegated to WNBA status in the U.S. - and that's exactly where it's heading - eventually so too will player salaries. Obviously that's easier for me to say than for them to do, but I see no other ending for this thing.
There are a number of questionable assumptions in this paragraph, assumptions the players do not share. They are not acting for the good of their wallets. They are acting for the bad of their wallets for the sake of future player wallets.
To the players the question is one of fairness for the likes of Sidney Crosby, Ilya Kovalchuk and Brad Richards and the 3,000 Juniors who will be drafted in the next ten years. These are the players who will pay if the veterans follow their wallets today.
1) How much
should Brad Richards make over the next ten years? Nobody can say.
2) If he makes $50 million rather than $30 million, where does the extra $20 million come from? Under the owner proposal that extra money has to come out of another player's wallet.
3) When an owner makes a terrible mistake and pays an Alexei Yashin way too much money in 2008, should the owner be the one to pay for the mistake or should all of the other players take less as a result? We know what the answer is under the owner proposal.
Never mind that revenues are impossible to define and never mind that the players don't trust the owners and never mind that it is impossible to say, really, what a fair percentage of the player's share of the pie should be. The owners want a system that turns the players against each other. Every dollar one player earns as a raise has to come out of another player's pocket.
One of the unintended consequences of this is increased selfishness on the basketball court. If another player is successful, he gets more money. At whose expense? It is at the expense of all the other players on the team or in the league.
The owners have to convince Mats Sundin that that type of system is fair to Sidney Crosby. That's really difficult to do - because it isn't fair - and Sundin is apparently prepared to spend millions of his own money to make sure the system is fair for Sidney Crosby.
Furthermore, the owners have to convince Trevor Linden, and personally, I think that is impossible. Someday a generation of hockey players may decide to sell out the future generations but I have a lot of trouble believing it will happen on Trevor Linden's watch.
Trevor Linden was elected by the players because there is not a single one of them who does not respect and like and trust him. They are going to have to throw Trevor Linden over the side to accept linkage and I don't think they will do it.
Tom