OPINION: HOCKEY WASTELAND

A rant by Devon Ellington

 

I wish my grandmother was in the room with the two sides in the labor dispute for the NHL. She would take the lead negotiators and tell them what she always told us when we argued or refused to speak to each other: “Behave, or I’ll bang your heads together.” That’s what both sides need. Discipline from an elder.

I understand the players’ position, but is this any way to run a strike? As a member of a union and a member of the committee who helped renegotiate my union’s contract last year, I have firsthand knowledge of what happens at the table. Simply sitting out or playing in Europe or playing in other leagues isn’t going to win the position. I wonder why the Players’ Association is not a member of the AFL-CIO. At the time of this writing, no answer has come from them – although I’ve posed the question on many occasions over the past year.

If the Players’ Association was a member of the AFL-CIO, the strike/lock-out/whatever you wish to call it would have been over within a week. Because multiple unions belong to the organization, if the players walked out and created a picket line at their home arenas (instead of playing elsewhere), members of other AFL-CIO unions would respect the picket line.

The arenas would be shut down. For any and all events.

You’d be surprised how quickly an agreement would come to pass if that happened.

Not that I agree with management. Granted, there are plenty of problems in NHL hockey, and, although money is what’s always publicized to horrify those who make minimum wage, money is never the only issue on the table.

In the case of the NHL, it is management who created the problem of the high costs and inflated salaries. You don’t want to such heavy payrolls? Don’t offer multi-million contracts. That’s all. Because management refuses to police themselves, they want to take it out of the players’ hide by putting the words “salary cap” into the contract. There are at least a dozen other ways to get the same result without putting that in a contract – with team managements respecting each other and the players. They want to buy the best players in order to bring home the Stanley Cup. And it doesn’t work that way, as the New York Rangers have proven for years. Would I accept ten million dollars to do what I do for a year? Of course I would. Don’t tell me anyone would refuse a multi-million dollar professional contract on the grounds of parity, because it wouldn’t happen. Don’t offer the contract and you solve the problem.

Do I think athletes should receive tens of millions of dollars while people are unemployed, homeless and starving? Of course not. I don’t think actors should receive that kind of money either. But they do.

No working person should agree to be in a position where there’s a salary cap. How would you feel if you walked in for your yearly review and were told, “Your work is brilliant, the company can’t survive without you, but we can’t give you a raise because of our salary cap”? By flinging around numbers that most of us will never see in our bank accounts, management counts on the regular working person to resent the athletes and not support them.

If there’s anyone in this situation whose testicles I’d like to see served up on a platter, it’s Gary Bettman’s. I lost all respect and support for him during the 2003 Draft in Nashville. I attended a “Breakfast with Bettman” event. His anti-labor comments caused me to choke on my bacon and sputter innocent bystanders with coffee. By refusing to come back to the table, he shows he’d rather see the NHL dismantled than do what one is supposed to do in contract negotiations, which is negotiate. That means both sides end up giving and getting. There are problems on both sides. If Bettman was serious about resolving the dispute, he’d come back to the table with a way to get what the owners want without a salary cap. It can be done. But his posturing is more important to him than a solution. His behavior indicates he wants the legacy of being the one to break the Players’ Association. The problems on both sides cannot be solved without sitting around the table and actually making an effort.

Here are some of my views on how the NHL and NHLPA proposals can come to center in negotiations:

Luxury Tax (per NHLPA) instead of Salary Cap (per NHL), but at a median figure between what each side wants. I actually don’t believe either side needs this, although it is the most publicized sticking point. If you don’t want an inflated payroll, don’t offer inflated contracts. Period. End of story. If no one’s getting the inflated offers, they have to decide if they want to play or go. Something else that needs to be looked at is how much does a salary gap within a team affect the morale of the team?

Revenue sharing. In order to give a detailed analysis of how this should break down, I would have to look at the books for the teams, and I seriously doubt anyone would allow that.

Retain guaranteed contracts per the NHLPA proposal.

Eliminate performance bonuses per the NHL proposal

(Both sides will whine a lot about the above two points, but it seems that the retention of guaranteed contracts will benefit more members than the performance bonuses. You’ve got to give something to get something).

The age for unrestricted free agency set at 30. Currently, it is 31 and that’s how the NHL wants to keep it, while the NHLPA wants to drop it to 29. An alternative to setting an age would be to say that once a player has played professionally for 5 years, he can become an unrestricted free agent.

Qualifying offers. The NHL wants to modify the 10% on the current contract, while the NHLPA wants to retain it. A 10% raise for a year is high; most contracts are lucky to get 3 or 3.5%, which doesn’t even cover the cost of living if you live in areas such as New York. There needs to be some negotiation here. Someone needs to come up with a formula to figure cost of living and the players’ anticipated career length with a fraction of injury possibility. Because athletes can have limited career spans, considerations have to be taken, but 10% yearly increase seems out of proportion within the context of the real world. These ties into the luxury tax/salary cap sticking point at the top. Are the current big money players with their high yearly increases grandfathered into the agreement until they retire, with new players coming in at the lower rate? Will the big money players play for the same smaller yearly increase as everyone else or it that a slap in the face for their achievements?

There should be a way to keep the overall costs reasonable, while still giving the players enough of a yearly raise to make continued play worthwhile and allow them to sock away some savings for when they need to make a career change, or, in the worst possible scenario, are permanently disabled from injury.

Arbitration process. The owners want to control it, and the players want to retain control. The point of arbitration is that it allows a fair, impartial hearing of the situation with a decision based on evidence presented by both sides. So neither side should “control” it. Both sides should be able to take a situation to arbitration whenever every other avenue of compromise has failed.

I’m sure there are other points on the table that have not been made public, but based on the information of the proposals by the two sides as published by The Toronto Star on September 30, 2004, those are my initial ideas on the starting points for compromise.

What are the alternatives for hockey junkies? The AHL, the ECHL, and, if you’re lucky enough, one of the Major Junior Teams. Support the local high school, college, and pick-up teams in your area. Go out and watch some of the up and coming women’s teams.

Remember, the Winter Olympics are coming up in 2006, and the women’s teams will be something special. Some NHL players have been allowed to play for the A, bumping some of the A players down to the E. Having spent a good many months watching AHL teams for my book, I often enjoy the action and intensity of the AHL more than the NHL. ESPN has let us all down by not replacing the scheduled NHL games with AHL games, but that’s no surprise.

Many of the players are in Europe, and some signed with the six teams of the OSHL (Original Stars Hockey League), who plan to tour Canada for the duration of the lockout. If you want information on their schedule, you can visit their website, http://www.oshl.ca/.

Earlier this year, both the WHA2 and the Federal Hockey League had attractive websites and eager preparations for a new season. Unfortunately, both sites are now “unavailable”. There is a message board for the Federal Hockey League, but it’s not much in use, with only a single message posted.

Bob Goodenow is scheduled to meet with the agents on November 17, and then a meeting with players is scheduled in December. Let’s hope that everyone returns to the table at some point before the end of the year.

I have this to say to both sides: Put the rulers down, take your dicks off the table, and negotiate with your brains.

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