Post by swervinmervin on Nov 29, 2012 15:31:13 GMT -5
At this point in time, the lockout is completely irrational. From both the players’ perspective and the owners’ perspective, the continuing lockout is costing them far more dollars, short-term and long-term, than any dollars that they can “make” by arguing over money that is in the single digits, by percentage. And it really doesn’t need to be said that any “gains” in their negotiations are just about splitting an ever shrinking pie in different percentages. They are both losing overall, and both will lose individually, with every passing day.
This is a special kind of collective madness in the sports/entertainment world. It reminds me of the story that some of us heard on TSN 1290 about the social study in which they offered two people $50.00, but only on the following conditions: (1) that both people had to accept it, to get anything, and that (2) one person could dictate how much of it the second person got. And in the experiment, most of the time the 2 people would not agree, and so both lost.
The thing about the NHL lockout is that the 2 sides are not only foregoing current revenues, they are also damaging their relationship with their fans, broadcasters and sponsors, and therefore their long-term revenues as well.
This labour dispute is completely different than it was in 2004-05, when there was a legitimate structural issue with salary costs in the business of NHL hockey. There are no problems of this magnitude in the NHL right now. As has been pointed out in numerous places, the issues are more about the distribution of revenues and profits – not the absolute amount. And even if the absolute amount was considered insufficient by some owners, they would have been able to reach whatever targets they wanted to for revenues and profits, through the high growth rate that they were experiencing in revenues. That is, until they began to damage their relationship with their customers (advertisers, broadcasters, etc.) and most of all, their fans.
There are numerous “what if’s”, in terms of how the NHL and the PA could have done this differently. The PA could have been ready to start negotiations right away (for that matter, why wait till the playoffs are over?), and both sides could have had their opening offers ready for immediate release (really, why not? It’s not like their well-rehearsed opening offers got any positive responses anyway!). The PA could have had their financial information requests already placed with the NHL sometime last winter, and the NHL could have provided that to the PA before the thaw. These things seem like fairly pedestrian ideas to this humble peon.
But the 2 sides missed their real opportunity to seal the deal in a reasonable way, in late October, when a full 82 game season was still a possibility. Every day of the lockout since then has been a “lose-lose”; an exercise in alienation of sponsors and fans; a “sop” to the egos of the negotiators; a foolish and dangerous experiment in walking out onto the cracking ice on a lake in the late winter.
Every schoolboy knows that they are taking an absurdly dangerous risk in that experiment. We’ve all seen the videos about walking out onto thin ice. All of us in Canada that is. Maybe it is indeed time for a Canadian to assert some influence in this process.
Mr. Molson, please tell the foolish schoolboys to get off the ice before it breaks!
Another Brookes Boys Blog
Swervinmervin @justgotupndjava
After my morning coffee, I sometimes go by the nickname “Geoff Brookes”
This blog was written in response to the following article by Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette:
Time for Molson to play the hero
By Jack Todd, Special to the GazetteNovember 29, 2012
To: Geoff Molson
President, Montreal Canadiens
Dear Geoff,
Please excuse the familiarity, but I’m too damned old to stand on ceremony — and this is too important.
As you know, the great baseball union leader Marvin Miller died this week at the ripe old age of 95 — meaning that he outlived most, if not all, the antagonists he faced across the negotiating table while making the Major League Baseball Players Association by far the most powerful in the world of sports. (And probably put one or two of them in their graves, come to think of it.)
Miller’s protégé, of course, is Donald Fehr, the man who has unified the National Hockey League Players’ Association as it has never been unified before. Fehr’s success with the notoriously fractious NHLPA should not come as a surprise: Fehr studied at the feet of the master. He is both the best and the most enlightened of all the labour leaders in the sports world, a formidable opponent who has been consistently underestimated by your commissioner, Gary Bettman.
In the New York Post last weekend, hockey columnist Larry Brooks said it’s time for a hero to step up in the boardroom, that some individual from the group of owners who still retain their sanity is going to have to step in to keep Bettman and his small group of hawks from pulling the league down around their ears.
Brooks has his own candidates for the task, including the New York Rangers’ James Dolan, who as owner of the Knicks helped nudge the National Basketball Association in the direction of a settlement of its lockout. Brooks also pointed to several organizations, including the Canadiens, Vancouver Canucks, Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks, which may be weary of ceding all authority to Bettman as the lockout drags on and they lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
But I would like to nominate you, Geoff Molson, to step up and act as the voice of the moderate owners before it’s too late. It’s true that you are relatively young in years, new to ownership and still outside Bettman’s inner circle — but against that, weigh your strengths: Your family occupies a legendary position within the world of hockey. Your team is the single greatest brand in the history of the game. You know the game intimately, as both a player and fan, in a way that few owners do.
You can point to a big barn that draws 21,273 night after night, come hell or the Columbus Blue Jackets. You can remind your confederates of those 24 Stanley Cup banners dangling from the ceiling.
And, although it would probably be impolitic to point it out, they are surely aware that you enjoy support from the fan base that is rare among owners and team presidents. I don’t believe there has been a man in your position so well liked by the public since one Sen. Hartland Molson was running things.
(Inevitably, there are still a few language zealots muttering into their maple syrup pie over the hiring of the unilingual Randy Cunneyworth — but they won’t be happy until Louis XVI is on the throne in Quebec City and Sherbrooke St. is renamed after that royal pain in the patootie, Charles de Gaulle.)
But I digress. Point is, even as the two sides sit down this week with a U.S. federal mediator in New York, the season is slipping away. Even before this lockout began, the NHL had lost more games to labour disruptions than the three other major North American leagues combined; if Bettman is allowed to take down another entire season, the repercussions are incalculable.
During the lockout that claimed the 2004-05 season, the public-relations battle for the hearts and minds of hockey fans was pretty much a push — if anything, fans and media tilted slightly to the owners’ side. This time, polls show 80 per cent of hockey fans supporting the players.
Last time out, the attitude of hockey fans boiled down to a phrase: “A pox on both your houses.” This time, the fan perception is that Bettman’s lockout is a wholly unnecessary greed grab, put into effect even with revenue soaring to $3.3 billion last season, simply because Bettman and the owners want more.
But Bettman has made misstep after misstep, from the time he basically said that “our great fans” are such suckers they can be counted on to come back, right through that 48-hour “window” for owners to strong-arm players and last week’s stunt, when he asked for a written version of the NHLPA proposal and then rejected it in less than an hour. (You, Geoff, won major points from players, media and the increasingly savvy fan base when you refused to take advantage of that window.)
When Bettman surrounds himself at the table with people like Bruins super-hawk Jeremy Jacobs, Calgary union-buster Murray Edwards and Minnesota’s Craig Leipold, the result can only be more bad blood, more failed negotiations, more wasted opportunities.
What is needed is a clear voice of moderation — or several. At some point, the board of governors has to put the brakes on Bettman’s Follies. From the headlong Sun Belt expansion to the multiple lockouts, Bettman’s leadership has been bizarre at best. Why, for instance, has the NHL poured tens of millions over a period of years into saving the Coyotes in the desert — while running up the white flag on the Atlanta Thrashers in a matter of weeks?
Above all, why revert to another lockout seven years after winning a salary cap and all the other givebacks the NHL supposedly had to have — at the cost of a full season of hockey? Surely it is time to recognize that Bettman’s scorched-earth policy is not the way to go?
The critical word, one that does not exist in Bettman’s lexicon (except when he’s blowing smoke) is “partnership.” The most workable model for sports leagues of the 21st century will have to involve a meaningful partnership between owners and players, in which the two sides work together for their mutual benefit.
The legacy of Miller and Fehr is exactly such a partnership in Major League Baseball; during this lockout, Fehr has repeatedly attempted to nudge Bettman in that direction, only to have his overtures rejected out of hand, because Bettman’s 19th century approach is more dictatorship than partnership.
When the board of governors meets next on Dec. 5, it’s time for some leadership in the room. It’s time young Mr. Molson of Canada, with deeper roots in the game than anyone at the table, took the lead in bringing this thing to an end and setting the NHL in a new, 21st century direction.
And if it becomes necessary for you to risk one of Bettman’s $1-million fines by speaking out publicly, Geoff, I’d bet that it would take less than 24 hours to find a million Canadians willing to ante up to pay your fine — at a loonie apiece.
Matter of fact, I’ll kick in my loonie now, just to get the ball rolling.
Yours truly,
Jack Todd
jacktodd46@yahoo.com
Twitter: @jacktodd46
www.faceoff.com/sports/hockey/montreal-canadiens/Time+Molson+play+hero+talks/7624305/story.html
This is a special kind of collective madness in the sports/entertainment world. It reminds me of the story that some of us heard on TSN 1290 about the social study in which they offered two people $50.00, but only on the following conditions: (1) that both people had to accept it, to get anything, and that (2) one person could dictate how much of it the second person got. And in the experiment, most of the time the 2 people would not agree, and so both lost.
The thing about the NHL lockout is that the 2 sides are not only foregoing current revenues, they are also damaging their relationship with their fans, broadcasters and sponsors, and therefore their long-term revenues as well.
This labour dispute is completely different than it was in 2004-05, when there was a legitimate structural issue with salary costs in the business of NHL hockey. There are no problems of this magnitude in the NHL right now. As has been pointed out in numerous places, the issues are more about the distribution of revenues and profits – not the absolute amount. And even if the absolute amount was considered insufficient by some owners, they would have been able to reach whatever targets they wanted to for revenues and profits, through the high growth rate that they were experiencing in revenues. That is, until they began to damage their relationship with their customers (advertisers, broadcasters, etc.) and most of all, their fans.
There are numerous “what if’s”, in terms of how the NHL and the PA could have done this differently. The PA could have been ready to start negotiations right away (for that matter, why wait till the playoffs are over?), and both sides could have had their opening offers ready for immediate release (really, why not? It’s not like their well-rehearsed opening offers got any positive responses anyway!). The PA could have had their financial information requests already placed with the NHL sometime last winter, and the NHL could have provided that to the PA before the thaw. These things seem like fairly pedestrian ideas to this humble peon.
But the 2 sides missed their real opportunity to seal the deal in a reasonable way, in late October, when a full 82 game season was still a possibility. Every day of the lockout since then has been a “lose-lose”; an exercise in alienation of sponsors and fans; a “sop” to the egos of the negotiators; a foolish and dangerous experiment in walking out onto the cracking ice on a lake in the late winter.
Every schoolboy knows that they are taking an absurdly dangerous risk in that experiment. We’ve all seen the videos about walking out onto thin ice. All of us in Canada that is. Maybe it is indeed time for a Canadian to assert some influence in this process.
Mr. Molson, please tell the foolish schoolboys to get off the ice before it breaks!
Another Brookes Boys Blog
Swervinmervin @justgotupndjava
After my morning coffee, I sometimes go by the nickname “Geoff Brookes”
This blog was written in response to the following article by Jack Todd of the Montreal Gazette:
Time for Molson to play the hero
By Jack Todd, Special to the GazetteNovember 29, 2012
To: Geoff Molson
President, Montreal Canadiens
Dear Geoff,
Please excuse the familiarity, but I’m too damned old to stand on ceremony — and this is too important.
As you know, the great baseball union leader Marvin Miller died this week at the ripe old age of 95 — meaning that he outlived most, if not all, the antagonists he faced across the negotiating table while making the Major League Baseball Players Association by far the most powerful in the world of sports. (And probably put one or two of them in their graves, come to think of it.)
Miller’s protégé, of course, is Donald Fehr, the man who has unified the National Hockey League Players’ Association as it has never been unified before. Fehr’s success with the notoriously fractious NHLPA should not come as a surprise: Fehr studied at the feet of the master. He is both the best and the most enlightened of all the labour leaders in the sports world, a formidable opponent who has been consistently underestimated by your commissioner, Gary Bettman.
In the New York Post last weekend, hockey columnist Larry Brooks said it’s time for a hero to step up in the boardroom, that some individual from the group of owners who still retain their sanity is going to have to step in to keep Bettman and his small group of hawks from pulling the league down around their ears.
Brooks has his own candidates for the task, including the New York Rangers’ James Dolan, who as owner of the Knicks helped nudge the National Basketball Association in the direction of a settlement of its lockout. Brooks also pointed to several organizations, including the Canadiens, Vancouver Canucks, Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks, which may be weary of ceding all authority to Bettman as the lockout drags on and they lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
But I would like to nominate you, Geoff Molson, to step up and act as the voice of the moderate owners before it’s too late. It’s true that you are relatively young in years, new to ownership and still outside Bettman’s inner circle — but against that, weigh your strengths: Your family occupies a legendary position within the world of hockey. Your team is the single greatest brand in the history of the game. You know the game intimately, as both a player and fan, in a way that few owners do.
You can point to a big barn that draws 21,273 night after night, come hell or the Columbus Blue Jackets. You can remind your confederates of those 24 Stanley Cup banners dangling from the ceiling.
And, although it would probably be impolitic to point it out, they are surely aware that you enjoy support from the fan base that is rare among owners and team presidents. I don’t believe there has been a man in your position so well liked by the public since one Sen. Hartland Molson was running things.
(Inevitably, there are still a few language zealots muttering into their maple syrup pie over the hiring of the unilingual Randy Cunneyworth — but they won’t be happy until Louis XVI is on the throne in Quebec City and Sherbrooke St. is renamed after that royal pain in the patootie, Charles de Gaulle.)
But I digress. Point is, even as the two sides sit down this week with a U.S. federal mediator in New York, the season is slipping away. Even before this lockout began, the NHL had lost more games to labour disruptions than the three other major North American leagues combined; if Bettman is allowed to take down another entire season, the repercussions are incalculable.
During the lockout that claimed the 2004-05 season, the public-relations battle for the hearts and minds of hockey fans was pretty much a push — if anything, fans and media tilted slightly to the owners’ side. This time, polls show 80 per cent of hockey fans supporting the players.
Last time out, the attitude of hockey fans boiled down to a phrase: “A pox on both your houses.” This time, the fan perception is that Bettman’s lockout is a wholly unnecessary greed grab, put into effect even with revenue soaring to $3.3 billion last season, simply because Bettman and the owners want more.
But Bettman has made misstep after misstep, from the time he basically said that “our great fans” are such suckers they can be counted on to come back, right through that 48-hour “window” for owners to strong-arm players and last week’s stunt, when he asked for a written version of the NHLPA proposal and then rejected it in less than an hour. (You, Geoff, won major points from players, media and the increasingly savvy fan base when you refused to take advantage of that window.)
When Bettman surrounds himself at the table with people like Bruins super-hawk Jeremy Jacobs, Calgary union-buster Murray Edwards and Minnesota’s Craig Leipold, the result can only be more bad blood, more failed negotiations, more wasted opportunities.
What is needed is a clear voice of moderation — or several. At some point, the board of governors has to put the brakes on Bettman’s Follies. From the headlong Sun Belt expansion to the multiple lockouts, Bettman’s leadership has been bizarre at best. Why, for instance, has the NHL poured tens of millions over a period of years into saving the Coyotes in the desert — while running up the white flag on the Atlanta Thrashers in a matter of weeks?
Above all, why revert to another lockout seven years after winning a salary cap and all the other givebacks the NHL supposedly had to have — at the cost of a full season of hockey? Surely it is time to recognize that Bettman’s scorched-earth policy is not the way to go?
The critical word, one that does not exist in Bettman’s lexicon (except when he’s blowing smoke) is “partnership.” The most workable model for sports leagues of the 21st century will have to involve a meaningful partnership between owners and players, in which the two sides work together for their mutual benefit.
The legacy of Miller and Fehr is exactly such a partnership in Major League Baseball; during this lockout, Fehr has repeatedly attempted to nudge Bettman in that direction, only to have his overtures rejected out of hand, because Bettman’s 19th century approach is more dictatorship than partnership.
When the board of governors meets next on Dec. 5, it’s time for some leadership in the room. It’s time young Mr. Molson of Canada, with deeper roots in the game than anyone at the table, took the lead in bringing this thing to an end and setting the NHL in a new, 21st century direction.
And if it becomes necessary for you to risk one of Bettman’s $1-million fines by speaking out publicly, Geoff, I’d bet that it would take less than 24 hours to find a million Canadians willing to ante up to pay your fine — at a loonie apiece.
Matter of fact, I’ll kick in my loonie now, just to get the ball rolling.
Yours truly,
Jack Todd
jacktodd46@yahoo.com
Twitter: @jacktodd46
www.faceoff.com/sports/hockey/montreal-canadiens/Time+Molson+play+hero+talks/7624305/story.html