Gary Lawless: Fans paying for NHL's greed

Are the fans getting screwed? The two sides have billion dollar war chests. The players side has enough strike pay to last 12 months.
I'm a typical guy with a house and 2 kids and I barely make enough to be able to afford a half a ticket in the upper deck, that's 20 games.
It's obvious enough for Lawless to get it right, the NHL+PA are having a pissing contest and the fans are getting wet.

I hadn't read this yet, when I made my comments (quoted above):

blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/09/05/recess-is-over-nhl-and-nhlpa-talks-resume-behind-the-scenes-reports-peter-adler/

Recess is over. NHL and NHLPA talks resume behind the scenes, reports Peter Adler

September 5, 2012. 6:23 am • Section: Cult of Hockey, Oilers
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Recess is over. NHL and NHLPA talks resume behind the scenes, reports Peter AdlerPosted on Sep 5, 2012

Who made the first move? Smart money on the NHL sending out a signal …
By PETER ADLER

The Cult of Hockey @ The Edmonton Journal

Now that NHLPA executive director Don Fehr announced to all and sundry last Friday that talks with the NHL regarding a new collective bargaining agreement have been recessed, what do you think is going to happen?

How long the recess?

Here’s the answer: it’s over. Has been since Tuesday first thing in the morning, at least.

You didn’t believe for a moment that as soon as Labour Day is over, someone from either side would pick up the phone, call somebody from the other side and utter words to this effect: “Hey, let’s compare notes and see if we can get ourselves out from the mess we’re in?”

Who made the call? Nobody’s saying, but wise betting money would be on the NHL. Not because they’re panicking more than the union. They haven’t got that much reason to panic as the NHLPA does, after all. No, this would happen this way because that’s how the current NHL leadership operates. After all, who was it, issuing siren calls to the PA last fall, asking them to come to the table?

Any betting man (or woman) would be hard-pressed to assume the league would call the union just so it can negotiate against itself. No. The idea here is to be consistent so, eventually, the paying public is aware of who’s been stalling and who’s been pro-active.

If that’s what’s happened, score one against the union right here.

Did the NHLPA have any valid reason to decline repeated invitations to dance, other than that league commissioner Gary Bettman is bad at polka and his deputy Bill Daly knows not a step of tango?

Don Fehr thought it had. The reason is contained in the theory of negotiations 101 textbooks. If you think, rightly or not, that the other side depends on a deadline for its life, try to delay and stall as much as you can. The other side might give up a thing or two that it would later regret. It would do so just because of the duress.

Except Gary Bettman must have read the same textbook. The league won’t cry if the deadline’s not met, he told the union. It would just close the store and wait the storm out. If anyone’s going to lose anything, it’s going to be the players: they won’t be getting any salaries, and they won’t be able to recover them, either.
Fehr tried to put a great face on a very bad move by saying the Sept. 15 deadline is an artificial construct, anyhow, and there’s no law forbidding anybody to continue operating under the old CBA until the new one is hammered out. You might have noticed the league didn’t even bother to smile, never mind laugh outright. And when some player agents began hinting Oct. 11, the beginning of the regular season schedule, is the real deadline, Bettman dismissed them. He didn’t even care to add that it’s the NHLPA that licences player agents, so, talk about conflict of interest.

Another trick: let’s talk about minor stuff, agree upon that, and only then move to the basics. This is a pretty useful negotiating tactic: once the sides have invested so much time and energy into the side issues, and are close to agreement on them (pending only the agreement on the major stuff), would it not be a pity to waste so much time and energy by ditching it all?

Well, the two sides DID try it, but as it had been getting them nowhere so far as the “core economic issues” are concerned, there had to be a stalemate here, too.

And this is one of the main challenges. For both sides. The NHL comes with an operating proposal that deals with those so-called “core economic issues.”

The NHLPA ignores it and comes up with something completely different. Not only that, it takes a full month to provide its proposal. The NHL dismisses it almost out of hand and comes up with a modified proposal on those same “core economic issues.” While at it, it gives up the previously suggested rollbacks. In return, it delinks salary caps from its hockey-related revenues. What this does, by the way, is that it takes away the players’ right to nose around the league’s and the teams’ books because – under this proposal – league revenue become none of their business.

What do the players do? Ignore it and come back with a proposal based on a revenue sharing modification. That right after the league told them they’re out of the revenue game.

The league can also point out that the longer the stalemate, the worse the situation in Phoenix. The new would-be owners are not signing on the dotted line with the NHL until and unless they know there’s a season. The city of Glendale is not signing the arena management deal with the would-be new owners until and unless they become owners in reality, not just in their dreams.

Greg Jamison says he’s got all the money needed for the purchase lined up. Yes. But how long are the financiers going to watch heaps of dough sitting idly in bank vaults, waiting to be spent on the purchase? Money that sits idly, to them, is a crime against humanity. Whether they are right or not is beside the point. On pure economics, yes, they are perfectly correct. But that’s not the issue. The issue is that sooner rather than later that money would be gone. The Coyotes would be where they’ve been the last few seasons. Sell and move them? Where? Quebec City? After a nationalist party had just won the provincial election? The province seems to have made a solemn commitment to pump substantial amounts of money into building a new arena. Will the new government honour this commitment? The federal government is (and has been) on record as saying it’s not in the business of professional sports. Whence else is the money coming? The province of Quebec is so much in debt, it would be in a worst state than Greece without transfers from other provinces. Are you sure other provinces would be overjoyed to hear they are sending money to Quebec so it can build a spanking new arena to accommodate the luckless Phoenix Coyotes?

And just as an observation: the economic situation in and around Quebec City hasn’t changed that much since the time Marcel Aubut realized he couldn’t afford his Nordiques any longer. Remember, professional hockey revenues are no longer based on gate receipts.

Let’s look at the Oilers. Let’s assume Rexall Place accomodates 17,000 paying fans. It doesn’t, but let’s be generous. Let’s say a ticket costs $100 on average. Got it? Fine: it’s $1,700,000 in ticket income every night. The club plays 41 home games. Using all of your fingers and toes, here’s the sum: $69,700,000 in gate receipts. That basically covers player salaries for the season. Where’s the operation of the team? The front office? The travel to 41 away games? Hotels?
That money is coming from a number of sources in and around town. Why do you think there are timeouts after almost every second faceoff? To accommodate commercials, that’s why.

Does Quebec City have any of this infrastructure? Come to think of it, even Winnipeg is going to be in jam, trying to meet its commitments, in the long run.
To sum up: have the players given a damn about the Coyotes?

Speaking of which: how many more times is Shane Doan going to have to extend his contract deadline with Phoenix? The guy’s loyal to the club, and to the community, but there are limits, aren’t there?

Oh, absolutely, something will have to give, and it’s perfectly difficult, bordering on the impossible, to predict who will blink first, over what, and how often.
But rest assured, there are phones ringing in the background, it’s just we haven’t heard them yet.