me2 said:
Arena rights would probably go with the team that owns/controls them.
[I can't think of a worse hockey idea than single entity controlled NHL]
This would very likely be a negotiable item but the deal would be contingent on them having this worked out. Given that these arenas are hard assets, the banks financing the deal wouldn't have a giant problem one way or the other because their money is covered to a decent extent by the real estate asset the arena represents. Half of them have an NBA tenant to reduce risk.
I saw an article (can't find it now but I believe that it was linked here) where it mentioned that the individual team prices would not be "average". The prices for each team would vary according to asset value, revenues etc.
Having slept on this, the really interesting moment for this structure comes if the WHA or something like it starts signing NHL players and trying to compete with the NHL. Notion of antitrust tend to go out the window because they do have local competition (though I belinve that with the 90% foreign make up of the NHL in the US and all the NHLers in Europe this year that position was already gravely eroded).
The way would be clear of antitrust at some point for the owners to restructure themselves into one corporation. So if the WHA or something like it gets going, the NHL owners could have their cake and eat it too.
The "free market" would exist between the WHA and the NHL and the rest of the world for the foreigners. The relative asset values of each team could determine shares in this new corporation. Revenues going forward could determine profit sharing/dividends - something like that. Caps, budgets and salary structures, linkage, etc with the players salaries are on the table to stay.
Goodenow as we know him today fades as a bad memory because some of his key union teeth get knocked out in this process (in the best case for Goodenow). Goodenow would be negotiating a union contract with the same rules as any other union with a company that now is clearly entitled to set salary structures and caps and a union with no ability to cry collusion and drastically reduced ability to cling to antitrust for it's survivial as we know it. The worst case for Goodenow is that the NHLPA is wiped out in the restructuring if the owners "start up from scratch" (a less certain or maybe more legally hazardous route).
It's ironic that the start up of the WHA could really help the NHL with it's labor problem.
I don't think the proposal the NHL heard during the BOG meetings was ever that seriously entertained but you can be sure that a big part of the pitch was the timely discussions/education of the merits of such a structure to deal with the labor problems. It is likely that this proposal was leaked purposely to shake the union and it's members. And it should because of it’s merits and possibilities.