So what makes the league obligated in any way shape or form to cater to what the players/IOC wants? The Olympics doesn't do a damn thing for them. If they gave them some concessions and the travel/insurance cost for the players was consistently covered (it costs MILLIONS), then we'd probably see a different outcome here. They made the smart business and financial decision.
Of course their allowed to have an opinion on it. At any point did I say he couldn't speak his mind? I merely shared my opinion on it. And why exactly is your opinion or respect any less trivial than mine? "I disagree with you so your respect or lack thereof and opinion is trivial". Real nice.
It has nothing to do with the actual Olympics. It's that they're complaining that they can't temporarily back out of a contract to do something that benefits them. It's also clear that some of them are not really looking at the dollars and cents reasons as to why this happened, or don't care. It's a very reactionary stance and everyone should have seen this coming from a mile away. The NHL didn't pull a fast one on them.
Certainly some players have more leverage than others. But we will ultimately see what happens in this scenario. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the players will just happily up and abandon their contracts and leave to play in Russia or somewhere else for the rest of their careers over this. I think certain players like Ovechkin, and older players might not care. But what about younger guys like McDavid and Eichel, or players that genuinely don't want to leave North America?
I don't think it's any guarantee one way or the other that all star players band together and leave the NHL or all GM's band together and block them from leaving. What I do think is that we might have a mess on our hands if things come to a head.
They're not obligated but that doesn't mean that it's smart of them to try to make the players obligate themselves to the league at the expense of the Olympics either. It simply is not a bright idea to essentially tell the PA that their opinions don't mean anything to it when it takes collective bargaining to make sure you have a product to make money off of.
The second part is just a straw man so there's no point in responding to that. lol
The other parts is are complete nonsense. Nobody made the statement that the NHL is pulling a fast one on them. The NHL is putting their business over something their money-making workforce has made pretty clear that they wanted to continue doing. Now, I'm not saying that they shouldn't put their business over their players. What I am saying is that they needed to have the PA a lot more involved in making that decision than they were because it is in their best interest to do so. In an environment where collective bargaining is required to keep your business going, pissing off your workers by ignoring them entirely is not a smart idea. There was a way for them to not go to the Olympics while still involving the players in that decision.
You also set up a false premise when you talk about temporarily backing out of their contracts to go to the Olympics. That's not how it ever worked. They collectively bargained the ability to go and made the schedule work around it.
And again, for those players that want to go, they may get suspended w/o pay but they're not going to pursue breach of contracts because it's not in their best interest to do so.
