“Who cares about the NHL? I just want to play hockey.” Words from a nine-year-old St. Albert minor hockey player on the weekend. Words that hockey fans throughout Canada should pay attention to. Words that the National Hockey League and the players’ association should listen to, closely.
The NHL and the players’ association are back talking this week in hopes of finding some common economic ground that would enable them to avoid a lockout the league says will happen Sept. 15 if there’s not a new collective bargaining agreement in place.
Chances of avoiding a third lockout in 18 years – the last one was 2004-05 – are slim for a number of reasons, beginning with the two key players in the negotiations: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the NHL Players’ Association new head, Donald Fehr, the man who took baseball players out for an entire season during his reign as head of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association.
Both men are stubborn, tough negotiators. Bettman wants to show his bosses – the 30 NHL owners – that he can correct the mistakes they made after the 2004-05 lockout and put more millions in their pockets. Fehr is eager to show his new bosses he can beat down hockey owners as well as he did the baseball ones.
And the fans? Well they’re all over the place, but like the sheep they have proven themselves to be, they will go crawling back to buy even the costliest tickets once play resumes. Even after the eruption of fan disenchantment with both players and owners in ’04-05, they swarmed back to the rinks and NHL revenues soared to $3.3 billion US. The owners and the players know this so any potential fan rebellion isn't even a consideration to either side.
Except maybe long term. If nine-year-olds don’t care if there's an NHL season that doesn't bode well for the future.
Both sides have presented their proposals and each has rejected the other’s so there remains a sizable gap to be overcome. As is the case with virtually every union negotiation, this is mostly about money.
The owners want to keep more of it and want the players’ share of revenues reduced from the current 57 per cent to 43 per cent. Basically switching how much each side gets. The players have indicated they’re willing to accept less so why not eliminate all the needless posturing and jump to the 50-50 split that both sides would settle on?
Then they could get down to the task of settling all the lesser issues, like salary cap, contract length and revenue sharing, and maybe avoid losing part, or all, of another season.
A lockout of any significant length would be harmful to teams like the Edmonton Oilers with a roster heavily loaded with young players who need to continue their development and can’t really afford to sit out a season. There’s also the question of what impact the loss of revenue might have on the new downtown arena. A lockout would be fuel for the majority of Edmontonians opposed to public funds going into the building, who could ask the big question: What’s in the building if there's no NHL hockey?
And if NHL hockey is once again bodychecked to the sidelines for any length of time because of the greed of both sides, there will likely be a lot more people agreeing with the nine-year-old and saying, who cares?
