NHL Season on Ice? Say it Ain't So?

by Gene

O.K. Let's get this straight. I'm a huge hockey fan. Live it. Breathe it. And I'll go to the grave knowing there isn't any finer sports competition than the annual Stanley Cup playoffs. It's the toughest championship to attain in the world. But the owners or the NHL and the players are willing to throw it all out the window this weekend if they can't come up with a "compromise" and sign a new bargaining agreement.

How sad.

What's even more sad is that neither leaders - Commissioner Gary Bettman or NHLPA chief Bob Goodenow - have ever really sat down and tried to reach a middle ground. All they've done is dressed up their own little pigs and sprayed perfume on them time and time again, trying to make them smell better with every passing negotiating session. And whenever bringing in a third-party negotiator was brought up, both sides laughed off the idea.

Let's look at the main facts of the offers and the league as it stands:

The league wants a hard salary cap with salaries making up no more than 55% of total league revenue. The problem, the league says, is that salaries have skyrocketed to a point so high that the league has lost $1.8 billion over the last 8 years. Of course, during this time, nobody was holding a gun to the owners' heads forcing them to dole out multi-million, long-term contracts to third-line players. The owners also didn't complain when they reaped tens of millions in payments from teams that entered the league from non-traditional hockey hotbeds, never minding the fact that going from 22 teams in 1990 to 30 teams by 2000 might somehow have a negative effect on the overall quality of the sport.

The players want nothing to do with a hard salary cap at all and have said from the beginning they'll never accept one. And can you blame them? They've seen their average salary rise by 300% over the last five years. In 1990, only a handful of players made more than a million dollars. Today, the average salary is $1.3 million. Needless to say, the discrepancy of pay has gone up ten fold. Unfortunately for the players, they hold absolutely no leverage.

So where does this leave the league? Sitting inside a bus, teetering on a cliff, with the commissioner ready to drive it over the edge and watching it crash to the bottom.

The saddest thing is that if both leaders weren't so stubborn, a third-party negotiator could easily come in and broker a deal. The league wants a hard cap, the players don't. There is a middle ground called a tax-based system. It may not be perfect for baseball, but it's a start, and it least it will make some owners shiver when they are faced with paying 50% more on the dollar for exceeding a certain salary threshold.

The big question for hockey fans is, can a deal be made by the weekend? Even the most optimistic spectators at this point say no. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail, but after watching the commissioner stay out of the negotiations for two months, then suddenly reappear and throw his previous offer in the face of the union, it appears the league is willing to be the first one to shut down for an entire season. What a waste. What a sad state of affairs.