blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2012/10/03/if-the-nhl-and-nhlpa-are-selfish-this-should-be-a-short-lockout/If the NHL and NHLPA are selfish… this should be a short lockout
There are those who would argue that the current NHL lockout is a result of selfishness – millionaire hockey players and billionaire owners each squabbling over what percentage of hockey fans’ money each should get. Really, though, what we need is a little more selfishness – and a little more enlightenment – on both sides. If that happens, this lockout will soon be over.
Let’s start by considering the owners’ side of the dispute. Jared Lunsford did some tremendous work this week crunching the numbers for the owners’ side of the dispute at NHLNumbers, comparing the current CBA, the NHLPA’s current offer, and the NHL’s current offer, and came up with the following:
The takeaway is that no matter what revenue growth is, the owners are financially better off taking the players’ offer, or even the old CBA , than canceling the 2012-2013 season and getting everything they want out of negotiations.
Lunsford’s calculations show that at the league-wide level, the savings – even if the league ends up with everything it asked for – are not worth the tradeoff of missing a season. This would be true even compared to the old collective bargaining agreement; it’s doubly true given that the players are offering concessions and would almost certainly be willing to be squeezed further to get an immediate deal.
The same is true for NHL players. Let’s ignore the raw finances and focus on career length. Over half of NHL players appear in less than 100 games during their career. Depending on the figure used, the typical career length is between four and five seasons. That means that a lost season will wipe out the entire career of some players, and result in a 20-25 percent loss of career revenues for an average player. Based on career length alone, losing a season never makes sense from a players’ perspective.
I’ve argued previously that the players’ rationale must be based more on perceived fairness than on rational financial assessment – because there is simply no case to be made that a lost season makes sense financially.
I’d argue, then, that what’s needed on both sides is selfishness.
On the NHL side, the simple fact is that the league isn’t in a battle for survival. There was a case to be made for the 2004-05 lockout, on the grounds that the league’s business model was unsustainable. That’s not true of the current model. In fact, parts of the NHL’s plan – such as increasing the salary cap floor – will actually do as much to harm weak teams as to help them; when that’s included in a proposal, it becomes clear that ‘survival of the small markets’ isn’t the league’s battle cry.
As an average NHL owner, looking at the lost revenue of a season spent fighting labour battles, I’d wonder why my commissioner wasn’t able to forge a compromise before the season was put at risk. If the season were lost, I’d start working hard to oust Bettman – because a pyrrhic victory benefits nobody, and sacrificing the season for a slightly better deal is the action of a man putting his personal pride above the best interests of his constituents.
As an average NHL player, looking at my likely brief career, I’d feel much the same way about Donald Fehr. I may not care for the salary cap, but aside from a select few (the highest of high-end players), the CBA that introduced it saw growth in salaries for everyone and a redistribution of dollars from the best players to the middle of the pack guys. The league’s offer isn’t particularly generous – and perhaps not even particularly fair, from my perspective as a player – but without question it beats a lost season.
Both Fehr – for his work in baseball – and Bettman – for instituting a salary cap – have earned reputations as superb fighters for the financial interests of their respective constituents. Because of that, we in the media often spend a lot of time wondering which side will blink first, or which negotiator will force the other one to crack. It’s a stupid way to assess the situation, because the interests of both parties are best served by a compromise deal that saves the season.
Competition and conflict can work for either side – in baseball, that’s how Fehr won a league without a salary cap, and in hockey that’s how Bettman instituted one. In this particular case, though, both sides gain more by compromise.
