The NHL Lockout Gets Personal

I love hockey, which is not exactly breaking news to those who know me.  So it should not be shocking that the latest NHL lockout has been a source of emotional angst for me from the day it was announced.

I know that a preponderance of the American sporting public is yawning and could care less that games are not being played.  Some may even be celebrating that fact.  I understand this with crystal clarity because quite frankly, when the NBA was going through this exact issue a year ago I could have cared less.

This however is personal.  I feel as if something that I love is being forcibly taken away and I am powerless to stop it.   All because some very short-sighted individuals on both sides are letting arrogance, greed, and a feeling of entitlement interfere with common sense.

I’ve tried from the beginning to take a pragmatic approach to this, at least as much as I’m capable.  Alas after last week’s promising talks broke down amidst juvenile sniping and seven figure bruised egos, I officially lost it.  The dueling news conferences held by Betteman and Fehr was the moment the NHL lockout officially jumped the shark.  It was the point where both sides essentially stated, it’s more important for us to WIN the CBA then it is to do what’s best for their sport.  A sport by the way that struggles terribly for mainstream acceptance in most of the United States.

Better yet, the moment Bill Daly uttered his infamous and patently moronic, “this is the hill we will die on” comment, the season was officially in jeopardy. 

I no longer want to make logical arguments even if they are obviously there to be made.  I just want to walk in to a room filled with all of these idiots and scream…DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW STUPID YOU ALL ARE!?!  Remember the age old question, if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around, does it make a sound?

So yes, I’m emotional.  Much more so than I was during the 2004 lockout and even when they ultimately cancelled the season.   I was devastated (in a strictly sports sense) when that happened but I GRUDGINGLY understood.  Regardless of any revisionist history being painted now, the NHL at that time was a financial calamity with an untenable business model.  It had to be fixed, no matter the cost. 

This time, it simply needs a financial nip and tuck.  That makes it impossible to justify nearly three months of lost hockey.

There is however a far more personal element for me this time, one that goes beyond simply my love for the NHL.  It involves the shared love and passion my wife Emily and I have developed for the sport, a love and passion that is woven in to the very fabric of our relationship.  To wit, four of our first five dates involved NHL hockey games.  Last month we drove to Rosemount in the height of Chicago rush hour traffic to watch a charity hockey game put on by the Blackhawks.  Those facts alone should give some insight to the depth of our commitment but there is more…much, much, more.

When we get a massive snow storm in Chicago most people worry about getting home from work and shoveling their driveway.  Emily’s first thought is that we can probably get a really good price on lower bowl seats at the United Center (she’s 100% right by the way). 

We spent the run-up to our late May wedding more concerned about a Pens/Hawks Stanley Cup final match-up (aka DOOM), then of wedding costs, bad weather or a catering mishap.  We were introduced as a new couple to the Penguins, “Boys of Winter” theme song and we danced to Chelsea Dagger during the ceremony.  Hockey memorabilia was everywhere.

My wife made it a point to purchase two tickets to a March 2009 game at the Igloo so I/we could make one last pilgrimage before they tore down the beloved old barn.  She suggested a weekend road trip to St. Louis so we could see the Haws and Pens both play (and lose to) the Blues on consecutive nights.  Heck she even planned a trip from Orlando to Tampa during our week at Disney just so we could root against the Eastern Pennsylvania Orange and Black Goon Squad.

We have all four episodes of 24/7 Penguins-Capitals on our DVR plus the entire catalog of Blackhawks’ TV episodes.  We have the 2009 and 2010 cup clinching victories for both the Pens and Hawks preserved as well.  These programs have been watched more times than I can remember, most often at Emily’s behest.

Our relationship goes 1,000 levels deeper than hockey and will survive and thrive with or without the NHL.  It does not change the fact that the NHL is an enormous part of our life together, more so than I can do justice to in this forum.  The league and the PA are not just taking hockey away from me or from her.  They are taking it away from us.  It’s yet another element of emotional collateral damage that the billionaires and millionaires ignore while fighting over slices of an enormous pie.

It breaks my heart when Emily laments that her love and passion for the game may be irreparably damaged by this ignorant dispute.  Keep in mind this is coming from a woman who went by herself to watch Blackhawk’s prospect camp this summer, proudly clad in her Antii Niemi jersey.

Certainly I understand and empathize with her disposition which rest assured did not develop overnight.  It started with the cancellation of the Blackhawks Training Camp festival and the associated 5K run.  It continued with the cancellation of the Penguins/Hawks game in November.  It crystalized when for the first time in our relationship we did not see a hockey game in Pittsburgh over thanksgiving.  And there have been countless wasted nights watching reruns of Friends that would otherwise be devoted to the Pens or Hawks.

No matter how much they claim otherwise, Gary Betteman, Don Fehr, and everyone else involved in this moronic conflict do not comprehend the depth of this emotional collateral damage.  They are blind beyond the economics and their selfish need to get the best deal for their side; when a good deal is more than good enough. 

I can accept that Fehr is a hired gun who ultimately could care less about the NHL.  The owners and more so the players however are stunningly ignorant to the reality that their sport and thus their livelihoods rely on the fragile emotional bonds they create with their fans.  Destroy those bonds and the NHL, at least in the United States, could just as soon be Arena Football, nothing more than a winter diversion for parents and their kids. 

It is solely the willing desire of fans to fully vest themselves, emotionally and financially, that allows everyone involved to make the money they do.  Remove that and Jonathan Toews is selling insurance and playing pond hockey in Winnipeg.  No matter how much they claim otherwise, no matter how much they thank us or appear to sympathize with our plight, nobody involved in this dispute truly gets that. 

The NHL and the NHLPA are arrogantly assuming they can survive a second cancelled season if it comes to that.  Their arrogance is rooted in the incorrect assumption that hockey fans are too devoted and passionate about their sport to walk away.  And they could not be more wrong. 

Even the strongest bonds can be broken if enough force is applied.  The same intense devotion and passion that hockey fans are known for could be the explosive instrument that destroys those bonds, if the league is foolish enough to shut down for another season.  There is NOTHING more dangerous in this world than a jilted lover.  Ask Major League Baseball (1995 to 1997) what happens when you overly abuse the trust of your paying customers.  And the NHL today is nowhere near as strong as baseball was when Don Fehr was involved in cancelling the World Series.

I hope both sides wake up to this reality in time to save the season and their sport.  For the first time I’m concerned they may not.

NHL Lays its Cards on the Table

The NHL has reportedly presented a new CBA proposal to its players, offering a 50/50 split of hockey related revenues with no rollbacks on current contracts. The offer also drops many of the pie in the sky extraneous demands from the original proposal, most of which had little or no chance of ever coming to fruition.

In short, the NHL has put its cards on the table. The league has advanced the deal it was probably trying to get from day one.

I have always believed the 50/50 split of revenues was the owners’ end game. Most of what they included in their first proposal; including dropping the players share of revenues to 43% was a smoke screen intended only to create the range of negotiation. If you do the math; the average of 57% of hockey related revenue (what the players get now) and the 43% the owners originally “offered” is 50%. I doubt that’s a coincidence.

The league’s negotiating tact was no different than you or me offering $250,000 for a house listed at $300,000 with the hopes of meeting in the middle at $275,000. Sometimes that strategy works, sometimes it does not. It all depends on the resolve of the seller and/or whether they see through the smoke screen.

Of course as my real estate agent warned me back in 2003, there is also the risk of insulting the seller with too low of an offer. If that happens the situation becomes emotional; and emotion can be a powerful deterrent to getting a deal done.

Therein lies the problem with the owners’ original strategy. They created so much animosity with their first offer that the players walked away in a huff, refusing to make anything more than cursory counter proposals. As my old JV soccer coach Joe Findlay used to say, the idea was solid, the execution was poor. The owners could have accomplished the same goal with a more reasonable starting offer.

Regardless of the reason, the owners seem to have come to grips with that reality and definitively changed their strategy.  They have scrapped the dog and pony show negotiation process which requires both sides to slowly move to the middle.  They have done what so many pundits said they had to do; backed down from their hard line stance for the betterment of the league.

Now the question will the players do the same? Will they understand that the 50/50 split was the goal all the time and that the owners have simply moved up the time table for presenting it? In short, will they take a very solid offer, make a tweak or two where necessary and lace up their skates.

Or will they see this proposal as a sign of weakness and push aggressively for additional concessions?  Will they simply see this offer as the real "starting point" for negotiations to paraphrase Fehr?

Take the former approach and we will have hockey in early November. Do that latter and the BEST CASE scenario becomes last year’s NBA; a shortened season starting around Christmas. The worst case, nuclear option is a repeat of 2004-05; which means no hockey. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle.

So again I ask, where do the players go from here?

I simply do not see the owners moving too far off this offer.  The players must now come to them.  I have read articles suggesting anywhere from 18 to 25 NHL teams are in the red, some because of the revenue sharing dollars they are already required to pay. The NHL today may not be the economic calamity it was in 2005 but there are still very real financial problems.  The salary cap was a starting point solution.  Now the cap figure must be adjusted to a number that makes sense.

I remain SHOCKED at the amount of support the players have gotten from fans in this lockout. They are earning unprecedented salaries even as most of the teams are losing money because the salary cap REQUIRES them to pay 57% of revenue. More than that, fans typically refuse to accept the perceived trials and tribulations of millionaire athletes, even when we are not coming off the worst economic collapse since original Ottawa Senators were hoisting Stanley Cups in the roaring 20s.

In spite of this, public reaction to date has been shockingly pro- player; shocking given that most of us would donate a kidney to make 10% of what Shea Webber earns…to play a game.  I'm willing to bit some portion of it relates directly to the general hockey populace's extreme distaste (however misplaced) for Gary Betteman.

If the players reject this offer, which figures to be the best one they see in the near future, I believe the tide of public opinion will turn decisively against them. My impression is that most people believe a 50/50 split is the right deal, especially if it comes without rollbacks on existing contracts. Delay the season further simply because the all-powerful Fehr thinks they can extract more blood from the NHL stone and I assure you the players will resume their typical role as the perceived villans in CBA negotiations.  

To that end this proposal, for whatever reason they made it, is a brilliant strategic move by the owners. The risk of course is putting their best offer on the table now, before the PA moves closer to meeting in the middle. The reward is shifting perception of blame for the labor stoppage squarely to the players. My guess is this was intentional; given the included carrot of an 82 game schedule and the recent hiring of a political strategist. Even if it was accidental, my conclusion remains the same.

I doubt Fehr much cares about public perception but his employees very well might. Reject this offer and the Shawn Horcroff’s of the world might encounter a bit more backlash when they lament the reduction of their 6 Million dollar fully guaranteed annual salary.

While I do favor small rollbacks from the players, the reality is this deal can likely be made without them. The projected cap range at 57% of HRR was $54.4 Million to $70.4 Million. Taking the league’s oft publicized $3.3 Billion revenue figure, I estimate the cap at 50% of HRR at being between $46.7 and $62.7 Million. That’s a much more livable figure for the current NHL.

According to CapGeek.com, 17 teams are currently below that $62.7 Million payroll figure and 7 more are less than $2 Million above it. That means that for the most part teams can get to the new cap number without rollbacks. Yes it will create a cap crunch for most teams over the next two seasons but so be it. The NFL basically did the same thing this year which is why Mike Wallace is still living on the paltry sum of $2.7 Million per annum. The main point is the league will have an economic model that makes sense in the long-term. And rest assured there will be some mechanism to phase this in such that Boston does not have to drop $6 Million in cap obligations over the next two weeks.

The next move is up to Fehr and the players. I sincerely hope they do what’s in the best interest of the game and work with the model presented. Fehr’s first statement (“this is a good start”) not to mention his track record and the NHLPA’s badly misplaced anger are ominous signs but not unexpected. The question at this point is not what they say, it’s what they do.

Cry No Tears for the Thrashers

I was mildly surprised to read several scathing articles in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, shredding the NHL for allowing the Thrashers to move to Winnipeg.

To wit, I simply did not think anybody in Atlanta cared enough to even notice.

I can not help but wonder if the Atlanta media is truly incredulous towards losing the Thrashers, or if blasting Gary Bettman just makes for good newspaper copy. Especially when several reader comments bemoan the scarcity of hockey related articles from the writer during say…the Obama administration.

My personal belief is that few tears will be shed for the demise of hockey in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

At the risk of trampling on Atlanta’s sports grave, I think Tuesday was a positive day for the NHL. The league is exiting a large, non traditional market that is at best apathetic and at worst could care less about its product. They are returning to a small Canadian city that lives and dies with the sport. The NHL has not made a move like this in some 30 years; since the last time Atlanta lost a hockey team to Canada. Some believe this move is an aberration. I hope it’s the start of the NHL finally coming to its senses.

I personally do not care for hockey in markets that clearly have no desire to support it. The poster children for this issue are Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix. I differentiate markets like Carolina, Tampa, and Anaheim which I think have enough support to be successful at some level.

I also think the NHL is bloated at 30 teams. The league’s nine team expansion in the 90s, primarily to non traditional markets was reckless and over ambitious. I was against it from day one and little has changed in the last decade to sway my beliefs. I would just assume move a few clubs back to more supportive markets and I believe that contraction should very much be on the table.

I acknowledge that it is easy to make such bold proclamations with somebody else’s team. I was not so much at peace with the concepts of franchise movement and contraction in the late 1990s when the Penguins were a legitimate contender for either. As an insider, I was well aware of the depth of hockey passion in Pittsburgh that was not always reflected in the team’s attendance at that time. An outsider, especially one with a short memory might easily have scorned Pittsburgh as a failed hockey market place.

Which is not to suggest that moving the Thrashers is a bad thing. Quite the contrary.

Atlanta has now had two bites at the hockey apple and both have failed. I’ve read articles suggesting extenuating circumstances in each case but the reality is, the city for whatever reason has failed to support the team. Blame bad ownership and/or bad teams if you want. Just understand that Atlanta and its fans were given a second shot to support a team and failed to do so.

That is in stark contrast to a Penguins franchise that struggled financially due to their owner selling the team’s future down the river and a horrifically outdated arena that could not generate enough revenue to compensate. We as Penguin fans probably do not truly appreciate the magnitude of Howard Baldwin’s financial carnage in the mid 90s. It’s purely by the grace of Mario Lemieux’s deferred salary that the team survived in the Burgh.

That’s why I’m hesitant to simply dump on Bettman for the Atlanta situation. Bettman certainly has his flaws and they are readily apparent. And he will ultimately have to explain why he’s moved heaven and earth to save the Coyotes in Phoenix while showing little such zeal for Atlanta. At the same time, he was instrumental in keeping the Penguins in Pittsburgh during the ill fated Jim Balsille flirtation. He also protected Buffalo, Ottawa and even Nashville.

Unfortunately the NHL’s actions with Phoenix raised the league’s bar for franchise protection way too high. When they fail to similarly protect Atlanta, Bettman becomes an easy target for sanctimonious media beat downs (and quizzical inquiries from bloggers).

I’m guessing the league’s interest in the Coyotes has more to do with politics and other backroom deals than some altruistic desire to save hockey in Phoenix. When a series of actions make no sense, and the league’s efforts towards the Yotes clearly do not, there are usually alterior motives to which we are not privy.

I sympathize with Atlanta hockey fans; to whatever extent they exist. I’ve said for years that deep down I never expected Mario Lemieux to relocated the Penguins; that does not mean there were not moments of trepidation in the process. It would be completely hypocritical for me to endorse moving a franchise without acknowledging my steadfast opposition and fears when such a possibility existed for the Pens.

Alas the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few. And hockey fans in Atlanta seem to be few and far between. So goes for the rest of the professional teams in that town as well. In spite of being one of the largest cities in the country; Atlanta lags in attendance in all four major professional sports. The Hawks frequently play to friends and family crowds. The Braves had numerous empty seats at playoff games; during a 14 year mini dynasty. Even the Falcons do not regularly sell out.

Let’s be honest, Atlanta losing the Thrashers does not exactly rank with Cleveland losing the Browns or Baltimore losing the Colts. It’s more reminiscent of when the Houston Oilers bolted for Tennessee. Some save the Oilers group organized a rally and as memory serves about 20 people showed up.

For my money, the NHL has gone above and beyond the call of duty to protect its non traditional markets. At some point you have to accept that the plan to some degree is not working.

The issues in Atlanta and Phoenix are obvious and need no further detail in this forum. Sadly they are not unique The Florida Panthers play to embarrassingly low crowds at home and apparently average less than 5,000 fans per game watching them on television. That’s flat out abysmal; a blatant failure that the league should no longer endorse. Those resources are better used to improve struggling markets with a legitimate chance to succeed (i.e., Columbus).

There is an understandable concern that franchise movement and contraction create a bush league perception. Arena football and MLS contract teams; not the four major sports leagues. Keep in mind however that as recently as ten years ago Major League Baseball was seriously considering contraction. And once in awhile its okay for the NHL as whole to take a big hit in order to make a play. The 2005 lockout certainly proved that.

Consider that of the six most recent expansion franchises; only Anaheim has been consistently successful (with Nashville showing bits of hope). Several have been abject failures. Columbus and Atlanta have each made the playoffs just once; failing to win a game. Florida just set an NHL record for most consecutive non playoff seasons. Even Minnesota has struggled.

Enough is enough. It’s time for the league to acknowledge that it grew too fast and too far in the 1990s. Not every market can or should survive. The Thrashers moving to Winnipeg is the first step in facing this reality. It should not be the last..

Let the Yotes and the Panthers go up in smoke. The league would be better off at 28 teams and losing two disinterested markets. And if one or two franchises want to move to better places, so be it. Seattle and Kansas City are open and available in the U.S.; as is Quebec City and Hamilton (theoretically) in Canada.

Sometimes an organization must take a step backward in order to take two steps forward. The NHL is there right now. The league has had enough time to determine which of its markets are viable and which are not. Atlanta failed the test; it should not fail alone.


Appendix: my proposed 28 Team, Four Division Structure:.

Atlantic Division (East) – New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Washington.

Northeast Division (East) – Boston, Buffalo, Carolina, Columbus, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto

Central Division (West) – Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Minnesota, Nashville, St’Louis, Winnipeg

Pacific Division (West) – Anaheim, Calgary, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Jose, Vancouver