It's Official: No Hockey

Or Canadians, we code for cheap, but not as cheap as India.

Not setting the season cancellation deadline in December = asshattery.
Players delusion over the cap = asshattery.

The league called the players bluff. There just wasn't enough time to agree on a cap figure. What stupidity.

Out of curiosity, you don't work for see-gee-eye, do you?

OTM : horn blows, red light comes on, etc.

If any good can come from this, maybe the Bettman reign of terror will finally end and they will actually hire someone who gives a shit about hockey to be in charge. Bring back the Chuck Norris division!

I wish this would happen, but I'm not optimistic.

I think the G is for Gestion, if indeed we're talking about the same thing.

if the league ever reconstitutes itself, i fear my penguins will not be among the remaining teams.

What does that tell you?

The players bungled this thing right from the start. They screwed themselves, big time. And I would be very surprised if Bob Goodenow, the head of the NHLPA, is still a part of the process when the new agreement is reached, whenever that may be.

In the end, I think the financial facts won out. The players' rhetoric starts looking damned silly when the reality is that they're getting outdrawn in the ESPN TV ratings by poker reruns.

I do miss my hockey pool, though.

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

xxxpost

I blame his contract.

Also, a 24% pay cut IS substantial. Has anyone heard of that one anywhere else.

Oh, definitely. But if the money isn't there, then the money isn't there. The players think that it is there.

Every sports team cooks their books. To me, the math is simple -- the NBA, NFL, and MLB have multi-billion dollar TV deals and draw big ratings. The NHL doesn't.

If the owners are in such a bind, why do they own a team in such a carefree economic organization? Why do the weeker teams need to be bailed out? Sounds like socialism to me (but the reality might be closer to collusion).

Again, they did say they'd take 76% of the pie.

I hate hockey, so my only hope is that the league folds forever (and thus Tom Hicks, owner of the Stars, gets screwed righteously).

I hate hockey, so my only hope is that the league folds forever (and thus Tom Hicks, owner of the Stars, gets screwed righteously).

You're an idiot.

How do we know the league couldn't afford that 76% anyway? The Forbes numbers are significantly more owner-friendly than anything the owners talk about. If the owners contracted a few clubs, that would have cut salaries naturally (except for the few superstars on the contracted teams) and increased their share of any media package available. I don't know why anyone expects the players to take it in the ass for the owners' mistakes. Everything, every step in negotiations, points to the players being willing to do their part, but the owners want more more more. The players finally cave on a salary cap, and the league balks on a meaningless $6mln per team. Teams don't have to hit the cap, so no one's going bankrupt for that $6mln.

Bettmann's primary desire is to break the union - he wants to come back next year with replacement players and start introducing scabs. Then the owners can have their way with players once their is no bargaining unity. Anyone who's cool with that can fuck off.

xpost

How do we know the league couldn't afford that 76% anyway?

Keep reading and rereading this sentence:

the math is simple -- the NBA, NFL, and MLB have multi-billion dollar TV deals and draw big ratings. The NHL doesn't.

I don't know why anyone expects the players to take it in the ass for the owners' mistakes.

True, the owners messed up by expanding the league, which I acknowledged upthread. But it's not as though the players haven't reaped rewards from those mistakes -- nine expansion teams in nine years created loads of new jobs, and the average salary is 2.5 times what it was ten years ago.

So, the players are 2.5x richer than they were ten years ago, but the league certainly isn't without a big TV deal. The owners are more to blame for creating this mess, but they have a far more realistic attitude toward how the mess should be cleaned up.

Again, you don't know what you're talking about here! You're in over your head! Do a little research - the owners have REPEATEDLY offered to open the books, they want the players' association to examine their financial records!

The union has repeatedly declined to check their books, because they've been saying, "Oh well we can't trust your numbers anyway, you've got 'em all cooked" etc etc So please stop with this crap about steadfast avoidance in opening their books - you don't know what the fuck you're talking aboot!

Yes, I could be wrong. My opinion is only based on the info that I've read (and the quality of that info).

the math is simple -- the NBA, NFL, and MLB have multi-billion dollar TV deals and draw big ratings. The NHL doesn't.
Proves nothing. Yes, the NHL is comparatively less wealthy than the NBA, NFL and MLB (and, actually, MLB TV money is mostly regional I believe, there are relatively few nationally-televised games). That doesn't mean the NHL can't continue operating with a voluntary 24% salary cut and operational changes. You're simply regurgitating the owners' talking point(s) - which is kind of unnecessary. Had they convinced me the first time, we wouldn't be talking, would we?

The NHL has survived for the last 15 years of big salaries without a "multi-billion dollar TV deal." No teams have contracted - some have moved, but they kept expanding and expanding. That tells me that the value in owning an NHL franchise isn't quite the horror you want me to believe.

No one disagrees that the NHL needed structural changes and the players had to make concessions. The players did. They players caved, caved some more and caved until they could cave no more. You can't expect them to bend to the owners will at every step.

What is this "more realistic" view held by the owners? "Do as we say, or we're bringing in scabs"? Realistic but fucked up, I suppose.

Peepee OTM about owners books - that's precisely what the Forbes people went into. Chicago goes from losing money to millions in profit when you actually check their entire revenue stream.

Their financial report was prepared by former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt, who found that the league lost $273 million in 2002-3.

The NHLPA claims it found $52 million in revenue among four teams that was not included in the report. And on and on and on and on.

Bottom line is, the league is not going forward without a salary cap. The owners own the league - it's their investment, they get the right to make decisions like these, and they're not going forward without a salary cap. There's enough players that do not support the current leadership of the players association right now, to cause real problems for the union. The players are not unified right now; the owners are.

Calling it a strike puts the blame on the players.

http://www.salon.com/news/sports/col/kaufman/2005/02/16/wednesday/

the NBA, NFL, and MLB have multi-billion dollar TV deals and draw big ratings. The NHL doesn't.

Absolutely. Which is why a hard salary cap doesn't make sense -- revenues aren't being shared. Since the NHL's primary source of revenue is gate receipts (not TV), that means sharing the gate, if not equally at least significantly. The owners have never seriously considered doing this. So any salary cap will have the effect of making teams with smaller fan bases (disproportionately those in the U.S. Sunbelt) more competitive on their shoestring budgets, while their big-ticket brethren in Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago have the perfect excuse to pocket their huge surpluses. A salary cap would benefit the league (not just not harm it) if it was couple to realistic revenue sharing (like in the NFL).

It's because the owners have been more realistic about the financial health of the game

Economics in the NHL, since at least Bruce McNall, has never been about the health of the game. The league has been run like a pyramid scheme, or a stock bubble, with the primary motivations being steadily increasing franchise costs and real estate values. Many, if not most, NHL franchises are owned as part of an entertainment complex where seemingly synergistic or secondary revenue sources are actually the whole point. For a particularly impressive example, look up what Coyotes' owner Steve Ellman is developing around Phoenix's new arena site.

In other words, the game of hockey has become a loss leader. The owners need a major-sports franchise as a lever to loosen local tax dollars for arena building, tax forgiveness, and infrastructure development. These in turn make it possible to develop shopping malls, office complexes, hotels, etc (where the real money is). If the team makes a profit year-by-year (ie, the gate receipts and other revenues cover salaries and other expenses), great. But if not, no problem -- the rising financial tide will float even the leakiest boats. That's the theory, anyway. The trouble is, NHL franchises have been effectively mortaged (at the fairly recent high-water mark of franchise value) to finance this sort of development, and the banks, seeing the tide reversing (empty arenas, no TV revenues) are threatening to call in the loans.

The point is, actual hockey is a luxury the owners can't afford. They need more than anything to maintain the paper value of their franchises. The only practical way they can open the arenas again is if they break the NHLPA and cut costs to the point that they can convince the bankers that they'll make enough money game-by-game to cover salaries and expenses. In effect, they're trying to uncouple their daily managerial finances (ticket revenue vs salaries, more or less -- not exactly big business) from their high-risk, high-reward investment finances in franchise values and the attendant land/arena/development deals. Which is to say they're trying to reverse their efforts of the past two decades. The hoped-for megamillion-dollar TV contract was an attempt to link hockey operations more positively to ownership/investment, but that's failed miserably.

In that sense, the owners' financial plan is more realistic than the players'. But that's only come after the owners gambled and lost. Much of what they gambled was other peoples' money. If they'd pulled it off, all profits would have been private (though Jagr would still be making $11 million this year). But now that the pyramid is collapsing, they want the costs to be shared in large part by the players, the fans, and lest we forget, the taxpayers (Toronto sold the SkyDome for how much?).

If NHL hockey is dead, the owners' greed killed it. Yes, the players gladly took higher salaries. But remember that the benchmark modern-era NHL salary is the one McNall gave Gretzky to come to L.A., which in retrospect was the beginning of the spiral. Big salaries were necessary from the owners' point of view, since they helped create and maintain the impression that the NHL was "big-league", which in turn fed the (mis)perception that L.A. (or Phoenix, or Tampa, or whatever) would become a hockey town, now that hockey had been tarted up with the latest in arena pyrotechnics and televisual trickery.

The sport of ice hockey, even the professional version I grew up on 20 years ago, was never the point.

I never understood why the fans were so anti-players on this one.

Deliberate confusion, otherwise known as Dubya-in-Arlington. Ownership teams increasingly have telegenic, fan-friendly figureheads (Gretzky is the best example) who are officially "co-owners" despite having a relatively small financial stake in the situation. Fans also confuse team owners with team executives (presidents and GMs), many of whom are respected former players or coaches. I think fans in general have a "lemonade stand" approach to sports finances: they get the daily-revenue-vs-expenses budgeting side but miss the bigger picture of rising franchise values, land deals, etc.

Close, but not quite.

This is all karmic retribution for the relocation of the Winnipeg Jets to motherfuckin' Phoenix.

"This is all karmic retribution for the relocation of the Winnipeg Jets to motherfuckin' Phoenix.

amen.

If NHL hockey is dead, the owners' greed killed it.

That's not really fair, because the game can't grow without the owners' "greed". Expansion clubs, big TV contracts, arenas (owner and/or publice money), promotion, marketing, etc. all come about because the owners -- not the players -- take serious financial risks. The NFL did it via expansion/merger, a salary cap, revenue sharing and now they've got a gargantuan TV deal which practically gives them a liscence to print money. When owners take risks, and they pan out, they look like geniuses. When they don't pan out, they look greedy. When they do nothing, the league doesn't grow, which means less money for everyone (which includes the players).

we spent about 2 hrs is class last week trying to apply trad. capital/labour conflict analysis to this affair, and then looking at the media coverage in that context. fun fun fun!

That's probably the sleaziest trick/scam in sports accounting. I remember reading this when MLB was bargaining with their players, and quite a few of the teams with small operating losses fell under this umbrella. That way, Bud Selig could say that 25 of 30 teams were losing money instead of 18 or whatever. It makes a big difference.

I should say "arguably fell under this umbrella", since the exact details of what every owner was claiming as a "salary" wasn't precisely known (and is complicated to figure out, since owners can skim money out of all sorts of pots to put into their own pockets).

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?ID=115396&hubName=nhl

gosh, i bet you'd see municipal election turnout go WAY up, too!

I guess I'm a hypocrite, thus giving me one of the qualities of the average franchise owner.

N.H.L. and Players' Association Reach Labor Agreement
NEW YORK (AP) -- The NHL and the players' association reached an agreement in principle Wednesday on a new labor deal, ending a lockout that wiped out last season.

The sides met for 24 hours from Tuesday into Wednesday to hammer out the collective bargaining agreement that will return the NHL to the ice.

Both sides still need to raitfy the deal. That process is expected to be completed next week, the league and the union said in a joint news release.