Reflecting on bad decisions
- by Mark Spector
Led by some Gary Bettman strategies that never quite panned out, the National Hockey League owners have painted themselves into a perilous corner.
So it’s time to take a break. Two weeks to ponder a way out of a series of poor decisions that have compounded to the point where getting out from under their collective weight is proving a long and painful process.
As another November week comes to a close with no hockey in sight, we are left with this quote from Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly: "We are done with making proposals and we don’t have any new ideas."
When the plan has gone so awry -- when history now tells us that so many of Bettman’s signature moves have strayed -- we’re not surprised that the NHL has no "ideas" left. It was, of course, a series of NHL "ideas" that got us here in the first place.
How about tagging extra years on those old CBA’s with Bob Goodenow, so that the NHL could get the players’ permission to take part in the Olympic Games? It still baffles that 85 per cent of the NHLPA membership would receive a 12-day mid-season vacation window, and the other 15 per cent would be furnished with a spot in the Olympics -- a life-changing experience -- yet it was the league that had to give concessions to make that happen, not the players.
Bad call, Gary.
Decisions like that are what led to the players raking in 75 per cent of league revenues. They resulted in salary escalation that would pay hockey players like Major League Baseball players, without the underlying economy to justify it.
This latest lockout, like the one before it, is simply an exercise in moving the pendulum back to the middle after Bettman allowed it to swing so wildly to players’ side during his tenure. It took 20 years to get there. Now, it will take two lockouts (at least) to swing it back to the middle.
Of course, bad decisions are like cockroaches. When you spot one, that means there exists plenty more that you just haven’t seen yet.
Yes, the NHL has grown economically to a $3.3 billion business under Bettman. But in doing so, its labour situation has been botched to the point that today’s poisonous relationship between player and owner is irreparable.
The players are equally at fault. They and their agents -- in orchestration with the NHLPA -- never missed a chance to sign a ridiculous deal, to prey on some GM whose job was on the line if he didn’t improve his roster to win some games, to drive salaries through the roof.
Today, players are paying the costs for 25 years of doing what was good for themselves, yet not good for the game as a whole. They drove the NHL’s economy into the ground. Like driving your car too hard, eventually it stops, and there’s a big bill involved in getting it started again.
The latest big bill, as of Nov. 15, is three paychecks and counting. How’s that Rick DiPietro contract looking now, guys?
Of course, hockey’s trough has been a crowded receptacle, as players lapped up money their owners couldn’t afford to spend, while owners gobbled up expansion money from a bunch of cities whose presence was supposed to ensure that dream American TV contract that floats all the other big sports.
We know now that a sport that is not indigenous to two-thirds of U.S. states never gets that mega American TV deal with. Simply placing franchises in football states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina doesn’t get you football money, a misguided fourth-down gamble that will surely be Commissioner Bettman’s legacy.
Today, Gary has his teams in Nashville, Anaheim, Dallas, Florida, Tampa, Carolina, Columbus, Phoenix and San Jose. But he never got the TV deal to go with them.
Worse yet, the only way to make most of those markets tenable is to revenue share.
And isn’t that rich?
The collective financial losses of sunbelt teams over the years will one day surpass their sum total in expansion fees gobbled up by Original 21 owners. Perhaps they have already.
Today, a lockout based on forging an economy in which the Columbus Blue Jackets can make a profit is killing the game.
It’s not like the days of the Canadian Assistance Plan, when the league propped up teams in Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton and Ottawa as the Canadian dollar plunged to 65 cents. Those are hockey towns. Cities where hockey is loved and ingrained in the culture. Cities that would recover to become Top 10 revenue clubs today.
Today, the league is dark in Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto while Bettman tries to save his stakes in Phoenix, Columbus, Florida and Anaheim.
Will we look back years from now and see those cities as economic drivers, the way we do those Canadian markets that were given aid? Will they ever deliver the U.S. TV deal for which they were born?
We all know the answer to that. So does Bettman.
www.sportsnet.ca/iphone/hockey/nhl-lockout/2012/11/16/gary_bettman_time_to_reflect_bad_decisions/?region=WEST 
