NHL Face-Off Day 44: Sides Continue To Trade Barbs
NHL Exec VP & CLO Bill Daly said the league was willing to
give players about 53% of the league’s $2.1B in revenues before the lockout
started, but that figure “may get even lower if the lockout lasts too long,
because the pie will be smaller to divide,” according to the CP’s Pierre LeBrun.
Under the original plan, NHL player salaries would have gone from an average
of $1.8M to $1.3M. Daly said, “At this point it really depends on the damage
we’ve done to the business. ... To the extent the overall business and revenues
are damaged as a result of this dispute, that’s going to impact both what’s
left [for the clubs and players].” NHLPA Senior Dir of Business Affairs Ted
Saskin added, “The longer the lockout goes, the more impact it has. But a lockout
is economically painful for both sides.” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said
Thursday on Toronto’s MOJO-AM, “The union is looking for a leverage point, a
critical point where they think the owners are going to give up. It isn't going
to happen. The fact that this whole work stoppage is about them waiting for
that point will turn out to be a colossal misjudgment." But Saskin said, "This
has never been about looking for leverage. This is about trying to find a fair
deal that works for both sides” (CP, 10/29).
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Rank-And-File Players Like
Commodore Do Not Feel Represented |
NEVER TEAR US APART? After Flames D Mike Commodore said
publicly he
would accept a salary cap as a means of resolving the lockout, Saskin said,
“We know that the overwhelming majority of our members do not support the views
that were expressed by Mike Commodore, but as I've said before, we have over
700 members with no gag orders or fines for players speaking out" (CP, 10/29).
But ESPN.com’s Damien Cox wrote Commodore “seemed to express the feeling of
some of the rank-and-file by saying the bottom 20[%] of the [NHLPA’s] membership
isn’t represented by the fight against a salary cap.” Commodore said, “You look
at the (union) and who’s in charge ... it’s all the guys who have made $30[M]
playing the game.” Cox writes, “On those occasions when players have spoken
out in a manner that is in contradiction to union positions, there has been
the appearance, at least, that they have been strongarmed by the union into
recanting their comments” (ESPN.com, 10/28). Senators D Brian Pothier
said Thursday in a radio interview, ”I’m in Binghamton [playing in the AHL]
because I need to pay the bills. The guys who are making the decisions are making
big money. They can take three, four, five or the rest of their lives off and
they don’t have to work again” (OTTAWA SUN, 10/29).
KEEP THE FAITH: THE HOCKEY NEWS’ Mark Brender cites
New Jersey labor attorney Alan Model as saying that if the NHL declares an impasse
and tries to unilaterally impose a new economic structure, the NHLPA “could
file a grievance to the NLRB alleging bad faith bargaining” by the league. If
bad faith bargaining was found, the NLRB “could order the parties back to the
bargaining table.” Canucks GM Brian Burke is among those who believes that the
NHLPA “has been slow to negotiate because it wants to claim there haven’t been
enough talks for [an] impasse to exist” (THE HOCKEY NEWS,10/26 issue).
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