Why don't players sign for less?!

[Thrive]

Why don't you offer to take a $10,000 pay cut at work? It'll help your company and you'll be a hero!

Comparing people who are already millionaires and people who work the average paying job is never a good example.

 

[Butch 19]

People take pay cuts (don't get raises, have benefits cut) all the time so their fellow workers don't lose their jobs.

I was gonna say can I vote for you for political office (Congressman, Senator - shoot, even President!!)

But you may be able to do more good if you became President of the nation's largest union. btw - good luck getting elected there!

 

[Blitz]

LOL, players careers can be short. Every shift could be their last in the league. The fact that they should take less is ludicrous. People critisize players reguardless, they may as well get something good out of it.

Agreed. Even if you are good/lucky enough to play 15+ years of hockey at the highest level in the world, you are still unemployed somewhere between 35 and 40 y.o. Thats a lot of years of retirement to pay for when you are accustomed to an above average lifestyle with above average cost.

And if you are not so lucky (injury etc...), your career ends early (Blackburn, S. Moore, Neely), and you have to go a lot further on a lot less - Take it while you can get it!!!

A lot of these guys don't even have high school diplomas - They are virtually unemployable in the real world and therefore, they have to make a lifetime worth of money in a couple years - Taking less $$$ is not the way to do that!!!

 

[obsenssive*]

what happens can be explained with "give them an inch and they take a mile". It all comes down the the creation of the NHLPA. The NHLPA has grossly inflated the demanded salaries beyond what the free market determines and the owners have been stupid enough to accept them.

 

[saskganesh]

what happens can be explained with "give them an inch and they take a mile". It all comes down the the creation of the NHLPA. The NHLPA has grossly inflated the demanded salaries beyond what the free market determines and the owners have been stupid enough to accept them.

Too simple. You should look into how hockey players were treated before the NHLPA. Oh by the way, the players are the free market. The union negotiates league employment standards with the BoG and has nothing to do with the negotiation of individual contracts ... that's a matter of give and take between the seller (the player) and the buyer (owner). Sounds fairly free to me.

As for the owners being "stupid", maybe they just define their self interest differently than you. Maybe because it is, you know, their own self interest. They should know.

The salary cap is a healthy thing in this business because it represents a mutual financial mutual understanding between players and owners.

 

[Fehr Time*]

Too simple. You should look into how hockey players were treated before the NHLPA. Oh by the way, the players are the free market. The union negotiates league employment standards with the BoG and has nothing to do with the negotiation of individual contracts ... that's a matter of give and take between the seller (the player) and the buyer (owner). Sounds fairly free to me.

As for the owners being "stupid", maybe they just define their self interest differently than you. Maybe because it is, you know, their own self interest. They should know.

The salary cap is a healthy thing in this business because it represents a mutual financial mutual understanding between players and owners.

The salary cap is nothing more than legalized collusion. Get rid of it and let the free market dictate things. Many players are severely underpaid.

It is amazing people are worried about player salaries but have no issue with ticket and merchandise prices. These are the things people should be getting upset about.

 

[Drake1588]

By and large, everyone likes money. More than winning or adulation. That's your answer.

Incidentally, taking less money does not guarantee you will win or receive adulation. It only guarantees you less money.

 

[Porn*]

By and large, everyone likes money. More than winning or adulation. That's your answer.

Incidentally, taking less money does not guarantee you will win or receive adulation. It only guarantees you less money.

also... with risk of injury and early retirement, guys need to bank early on. It's sad, but it is what it is...

 

[Hockey Team]

Comparing people who are already millionaires and people who work the average paying job is never a good example.

It's the same concept on a different scale

 

[eggy2486]

the simple question is why would anyone take less money than they're being offered or less than what they're worth, i can live comfortably on what i'm making currently but if i was offered more, i'd take it without questions, i think almost everyone would do the same .. if they want to voluntarily take a pay cut then that's awesome, they probably want the team to spend more on quality teammates or whatever reason, but to critisize them for not doing that isnt right ... as an example, personally, i dont think weber is worth $7mil, but the fact is that the team thinks that is how much he is worth, otherwise they would let him walk and sign with someone else, it happens all the time, if you have negotiating power, you might as well use it

 

[La Grosse Tendresse]

Then what about the greedy owners who would otherwise be making the money? They deserve it because?

 

[Eberle]

People are looking at this the wrong way. It isn't a pay cut so much as taking less money to work for a preferable organization. Many people, including hockey players, do this.

The fact is, we don't know the inner workings of a negotiation and it is hard to say whether a player took less money to play for a preferable organization outside of extreme cases like Vokoun (and even he has said there weren't many offers out there to begin with).

I think the problem when comparing players' salaries with other players in the league is that longer term contracts are signed, and then in later years, players performing well look underpaid because of the increasing cap (players who sign contracts later get bigger contracts). There are obviously more perceived overpaid players than underpaid players, and there are too many reasons why that might be to even bother talking about.

With that said, everybody who said things like "oh, they need to make tons of money because they retire earlier than most, or they might get injured" need a reality check. Many hockey players make more in like 1-3 years than many people make their entire lives. The only reason these people are accustomed to their higher profile lives and the spending habits that come with them is because they get paid so much to begin with. It wasn't always like this and it isn't like this for all athletes in all sports.

The Canadian Football League has a salary cap. It's in the neighbourhood of 4-5 million dollars. Players make anywhere from $30,000 to hundreds of thousands.

Just because they are athletes doesn't mean they need to be paid more. I understand the differences between the two leagues and why this discrepancy exists, but to say that these guys NEED to get paid millions because they risk injury and they retire early is asinine.

 

[Coramoor]

the simple question is why would anyone take less money than they're being offered or less than what they're worth, i can live comfortably on what i'm making currently but if i was offered more, i'd take it without questions, i think almost everyone would do the same .. if they want to voluntarily take a pay cut then that's awesome, they probably want the team to spend more on quality teammates or whatever reason, but to critisize them for not doing that isnt right ... as an example, personally, i dont think weber is worth $7mil, but the fact is that the team thinks that is how much he is worth, otherwise they would let him walk and sign with someone else, it happens all the time, if you have negotiating power, you might as well use it

you're wrong on the weber situation, it was a team asked for arbitration, which means they can't walk away from the award

 

[JohnLennon]

Why don't you offer to take a $10,000 pay cut at work? It'll help your company and you'll be a hero!

First post turns out to be the best post.

 

[SmellOfVictory]

It's the same concept on a different scale

The scale is important, and alters the concept. To the average person, a salary increase of 10% can mean the difference between being able to afford a house or not. To the highly-paid NHLer (I'm not including guys who make under a million/year here), a salary increase of 10% just means luxury beyond what they already have.

I realize it's still different since their peers are all making large amounts of cash so they don't exactly have anchors in the normal world, but their salaries and normal salaries are totally incomparable.

While we're on the subject of the idiotic "take a 10k pay cut at work" argument: athletes are playing for money, yes, but there is a great deal of prestige around being a winning player as well. So in addition to the completely different payscales, they can help themselves by taking a pay cut because it allows their team to be (hypothetically) better. No regular person is going to get an award that anyone gives a crap about for being part of a successful company. Oh, you work for Google? Good for you, I guess. You know who will remember that after you die? Nobody. You win a couple of Stanley Cups as a star player, and sports nerds such as ourselves will talk about you for decades.

To further my wall of text: in the real world, the employers hold most of the power. If they pay you a lot of money it's because they can afford to do it without detracting from the company's performance. In the NHL the players hold most of the power, since without them there is no league. The players have the ability to leverage contracts that absolutely do detract from the performance of their teams (particularly with the cap), making the comparison between them and regular people even more ridiculous.

 

[Strangle]

Use the Sharp signing as an example. He will be making 5.9mil per year....Plenty of people here will say it is a slight overpayment. If his stats decline just slightly, the contract will look even worse, as he is skating on thin ice (pun intended).

Soooo...the guy already has more money than he knows what to do with, why couldn't he just sign for 4mil/year?!! Then while he is putting up better numbers than other guys that make more than him....he looks like the hero.

Paul Kariya signed with the Blues for 6mil/year at 3 years. I personally loved the guy, but a large percentile of the die hard local fans talked trash on him constantly because of his salary. If he was signed for less...there would have been no issue, and weight off of his shoulders.

Is it just pure greed?

You take less money ... Work for only ten years if you're lucky and watch fellow employees who you are much more talented than make much more money than you do.

Sound like a good idea?

 

[Strangle]

Kariya took an 8.8 million dollar pay cut to play with selanne on the Avs. It is amazing what you can "afford" to do when you already have millions in your savings account.

I'm a 25 year old trying to become a first time home owner...it is a little difficult to compare my pay with theirs.

Hf never stops talking about over paid players, so I simply brought the question out into the open. That's all.

It's not the players fault if they are overpaid. It's the GM's.

 

[Hockey Team]

Again, I'm talking about a player taking less $ to play for the same team. If the team's willing to pay 6 mil then taking 5 is dumb. A lot of players would give up a lot of $ (for 1 year) if it's going to give them a cup, but you can't even get close to that kind of certainty to the point where guys are going to give up a lot of $.

As far as the players are the league... The employees are the company. What company would survive if all their employees left tomorrow? Also the league generates the $, which gives them a lot of power too. Either way that discussion is moot since if either side doesn't want to play ball and there's a lockout both sides get screwed big time. I have to say for sports though the teams have more power since a lockout hurts much more for the players. First off the biggest expense for a team is payroll and that pretty much goes away if there's no play. Team owners also usually have other business ventures. You never want to lose on a business but they can handle the loss if they feel that it'll be made up by what they get out of the lockout. The business is also long term. They plan on having the team for the next 50 years. For the players this is their only income, and they only have around a 10 year window for their career. Once the year is over that's gone. From the business side it's like give up 20 million, have a lockout, and get back 30 million over the next 3 years, which makes the lockout a good investment. For the player it's lose a year from your playing career.

The scale is important, and alters the concept. To the average person, a salary increase of 10% can mean the difference between being able to afford a house or not. To the highly-paid NHLer (I'm not including guys who make under a million/year here), a salary increase of 10% just means luxury beyond what they already have.

I realize it's still different since their peers are all making large amounts of cash so they don't exactly have anchors in the normal world, but their salaries and normal salaries are totally incomparable.

While we're on the subject of the idiotic "take a 10k pay cut at work" argument: athletes are playing for money, yes, but there is a great deal of prestige around being a winning player as well. So in addition to the completely different payscales, they can help themselves by taking a pay cut because it allows their team to be (hypothetically) better. No regular person is going to get an award that anyone gives a crap about for being part of a successful company. Oh, you work for Google? Good for you, I guess. You know who will remember that after you die? Nobody. You win a couple of Stanley Cups as a star player, and sports nerds such as ourselves will talk about you for decades.

To further my wall of text: in the real world, the employers hold most of the power. If they pay you a lot of money it's because they can afford to do it without detracting from the company's performance. In the NHL the players hold most of the power, since without them there is no league. The players have the ability to leverage contracts that absolutely do detract from the performance of their teams (particularly with the cap), making the comparison between them and regular people even more ridiculous.

 

[Swept In Seven]

why not get everything you can. This is their job you know

 

[Fugu]

Kariya took an 8.8 million dollar pay cut to play with selanne on the Avs. It is amazing what you can "afford" to do when you already have millions in your savings account.

I'm a 25 year old trying to become a first time home owner...it is a little difficult to compare my pay with theirs.

Hf never stops talking about over paid players, so I simply brought the question out into the open. That's all.

It's fan jingoism, bleated after the NHL PR machine went to work.

What's the metric for not being overpaid? Relative to what or whom? It's an incredibly subjective conclusion that ignores supply and demand--- even within a capped environment.

what happens can be explained with "give them an inch and they take a mile". It all comes down the the creation of the NHLPA. The NHLPA has grossly inflated the demanded salaries beyond what the free market determines and the owners have been stupid enough to accept them.

It's exactly a market dynamic that set those salaries, but within the artificial constraints a CBA builds into the process. As Fehr Time suggests, if you want a totally free market, do away with the RFA and rookie designations/restraints and let's see what free market really means. It's the owners, not the players, that want to rig the market by having the restraints put in place, not the players.

The salary cap is nothing more than legalized collusion. Get rid of it and let the free market dictate things. Many players are severely underpaid.

It is amazing people are worried about player salaries but have no issue with ticket and merchandise prices. These are the things people should be getting upset about.

Exactly. Any CBA is a legalized collusion though. From the entry draft system on up to free agency, the system is nothing more than a way for teams to accumulate assets and control the pay and options available to a player.

 

[TaketheCannoli]

If you mean voluntary pay cuts, I'd argue against your claim that it happens all the time.

If you mean that companies do this on behalf of their employees, I'd argue "so what?".

Lately, I've seen a lot of public school teachers in Ohio take voluntary pay cuts to help their districts manage deficits. These have typically been voluntary offers by the teachers unions and approved by a vote of the members.

 

[leoleo3535]

"Why don't players sign for less?!"

Many do.
Consider that most of them have short careers the pay is not very large.
If you are elite in the business world you have a far longer career and can net similar money without the health risks.
They are worth every nickel they get in my books.