Official NHL and NHLPA CBA Negotiations Thread

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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

Post by Oaklandblue »

not_a_wings_fan wrote:I am mixed on issues - some I think the players have good points, some the owners.

1.) Contracts should be no more than the shorter of 7 years or the player's 35th birthday. Max contract 35 and older is 2 years.

2.) Yearly salaries can't vary by more than 25% across the life of the contract. A deal that pays $4mil in year one can't pay more than 5 or less than 3 over the life of the contract.

3.) Your cap hit is what you pay the player in the given year. No averaging, no bullshit.

4.) The players need to take a lower share of revenue.

5.) No revenue is protected from the players. If it's hockey income, it goes in the pile to be divided.

6.) Revenue should be shared through disproportionate allocation of tv and licensing revenues, not by payments from clubs to the league and then back. The goal is leveling the field so that all teams have nearly identical payrolls, the major difference is scouting, drafting, coaching, and player performance - not pocket depth.

7.) All of this makes too much sense and lawyers, agent, and league-hanger-onners will never make enough money to be on board with a system that makes simple sense.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

Post by theohall »

Adding my comments within the qoutes in bold and italic
not_a_wings_fan wrote:I am mixed on issues - some I think the players have good points, some the owners.

1.) Contracts should be no more than the shorter of 7 years or the player's 35th birthday. Max contract 35 and older is 2 years. Owners will never agree to this.

2.) Yearly salaries can't vary by more than 25% across the life of the contract. A deal that pays $4mil in year one can't pay more than 5 or less than 3 over the life of the contract. Owners will never agree to this.

3.) Your cap hit is what you pay the player in the given year. No averaging, no bullshit. Owners will never agree to this.

4.) The players need to take a lower share of revenue. This is what the Owners want and the players already agreed to a halfway point from what the Owners were asking in terms of reducing players share of revenue.

5.) No revenue is protected from the players. If it's hockey income, it goes in the pile to be divided. Owners will never agree to this.

6.) Revenue should be shared through disproportionate allocation of tv and licensing revenues, not by payments from clubs to the league and then back. The goal is leveling the field so that all teams have nearly identical payrolls, the major difference is scouting, drafting, coaching, and player performance - not pocket depth. Owners will never agree to this.

7.) All of this makes too much sense and lawyers, agent, and league-hanger-onners will never make enough money to be on board with a system that makes simple sense. Owners will never agree to this.
All of those comments make sense. The problem is the Owners will never agree to them. See why I am on the Players side in this situation?
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

Post by Oaklandblue »

theohall wrote:Adding my comments within the qoutes in bold and italic
not_a_wings_fan wrote:I am mixed on issues - some I think the players have good points, some the owners.

1.) Contracts should be no more than the shorter of 7 years or the player's 35th birthday. Max contract 35 and older is 2 years. Owners will never agree to this.

2.) Yearly salaries can't vary by more than 25% across the life of the contract. A deal that pays $4mil in year one can't pay more than 5 or less than 3 over the life of the contract. Owners will never agree to this.

3.) Your cap hit is what you pay the player in the given year. No averaging, no bullshit. Owners will never agree to this.

4.) The players need to take a lower share of revenue. This is what the Owners want and the players already agreed to a halfway point from what the Owners were asking in terms of reducing players share of revenue.

5.) No revenue is protected from the players. If it's hockey income, it goes in the pile to be divided. Owners will never agree to this.

6.) Revenue should be shared through disproportionate allocation of tv and licensing revenues, not by payments from clubs to the league and then back. The goal is leveling the field so that all teams have nearly identical payrolls, the major difference is scouting, drafting, coaching, and player performance - not pocket depth. Owners will never agree to this.

7.) All of this makes too much sense and lawyers, agent, and league-hanger-onners will never make enough money to be on board with a system that makes simple sense. Owners will never agree to this.
All of those comments make sense. The problem is the Owners will never agree to them. See why I am on the Players side in this situation?
The problem is that the players are just contractual employees who have no say in the league regardless if they have a player's association or a CBA, it'll always be whatever the league decides to meet halfway with, always. If the players owned shares of the league and it was player-ran in that sense, I think it'd balance itself out.

It might be time to try the WHA again. Players pool their money and put together six or eight teams. There are enough places with a desire for a hockey team of any kind to make a stab at it and with some of these players making enough money to buy minor league teams, now might be the time.

Maybe if the players are smart they'll say to hell with the season, form something and challenge the NHL for the Cup. They won't win a CBA in court but maybe they can win the ability to challenge for the Cup. That would get enough headlines, even if the court case fails, to get their new league off the ground.

Yeah, a crazy thought for crazy times, I know.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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The Iron Sheik says some thought provoking things regarding the lockout on Twitter:
The Gary Bettman have the taco dick if he don't let the nhl player play
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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dmiles2186 wrote:The Iron Sheik says some thought provoking things regarding the lockout on Twitter:
The Gary Bettman have the taco dick if he don't let the nhl player play
What the...
The Iron Sheik has a Twitter account?
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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STLADOGG wrote:
dmiles2186 wrote:The Iron Sheik says some thought provoking things regarding the lockout on Twitter:
The Gary Bettman have the taco dick if he don't let the nhl player play
What the...
The Iron Sheik has a Twitter account?
Yup. Proof:

https://twitter.com/the_ironsheik/statu ... 8851111936
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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Gary Assface wrote: ''In effect, (talks) got stonewalled today.''
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nhl-breaks ... --nhl.html

Things apparently took a major turn for the worse today. I was hopefully optimistic that this might be settled in time, but now I can see very little hope at all that we will have a full season.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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I've already told myself there will be no hockey this year.

Anything above that is a bonus now.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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WaukeeBlues wrote:I've already told myself there will be no hockey this year.

Anything above that is a bonus now.
That would shock me. Absolutely shock me. Not because it's not possible, we all found that out that it was possible back in 2005.
Why it would shock me is because it JUST happened 7 years ago. I can see part of the season being lost...maybe 1/3 of it. But the entire season being lost? If the entire season is lost, then both sides are completely inept or stupid or both. No way they can let this happen again only 7 years after the last lost season.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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Money is going to ruin sports
From Stroke of Genius(Bobby Jones movie).
It has.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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cprice12 wrote:
WaukeeBlues wrote:I've already told myself there will be no hockey this year.

Anything above that is a bonus now.
That would shock me. Absolutely shock me. Not because it's not possible, we all found that out that it was possible back in 2005.
Why it would shock me is because it JUST happened 7 years ago. I can see part of the season being lost...maybe 1/3 of it. But the entire season being lost? If the entire season is lost, then both sides are completely inept or stupid or both. No way they can let this happen again only 7 years after the last lost season.
I hope you're right but for a few reasons I think another year wide lockout will happen.

1) The owners got their way, almost all of it, last go-round because the whole season was cancelled. The owners bent the NHLPA over the proverbial table once the year was shot. History showed they can use the threat of a season wide lockout to get what they want and as long as they don't mind losing another year, can get it.

2) Many of the owners probably don't care if there is a lockout. In combination with the reason above, it doesn't matter to most of them if there is no hockey this year. If anything it could be a good thing for many owners: if there's no hockey, they aren't losing money. One hopes there are other reasons for not wanting the season to be cancelled (truly loving the sport, trying to reach an agreement for the fans) but my inner pessimist says those interests are a distant second.

3) The fans will come back. We did last time, didn't we? So from that standpoint, does it really "matter" if two season ending lockouts occur in a 7 year period? What if the owners don't mind having another season ending lockout so that they can end this "once and for all"? If the changes are important enough to them, I see no reason why the proximity of time between the two lockouts would really matter to them. It's bad publicity, it's bad for the sport, but they'd get what they want and the fans will come back. We always do.

4) They're insanely far apart so it's going to take a lot of time to come to anything resembling a middle ground. All I keep reading from players and people in "the know," is that there is next to no common ground and the owners aren't budging at all. Drafting new proposals take time. And from a negotiations standpoint, you don't cave a LOT when you draft a new proposal, only a little, just to show you're moving closer to the other side. So if they are crazy far apart it's going to take more time and more proposals to reel in that gap. Unless the players cave by December (which is, IMO, the only way a season ending lockout will be avoided: the players caving), the season is toast. My opinion.

I'm also insanely pessimistic. I honestly don't believe that Bettman and the owners care if there is a lockout and if anything are using the threat of it to get what they want. In my view, this season is in the hands of the NHLPA and how much they have to cave before Bettman and the owners say "close enough." At least we know Bettman will keep being booed for the next 10 times he presents the Stanley Cup.
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

Post by Winning Unlimited »

Lets lock out the players, and let me quarterback the Blues' powerplay. :cup:
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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If even part of the season was played, but Tarasenko had gone back to the KHL, how impossible would it be to get him back for what was left of the NHL season?
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Re: NHL and NHLPA still very far off

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I can't believe that this lockout has kept me from playing fantasy football....
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Re: Official NHL and NHLPA CBA Negotiations Thread

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I renamed the thread to better reflect ongoing conversations about the CBA over the long haul.
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Re: Official NHL and NHLPA CBA Negotiations Thread

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Montreal Players Fight Back
http://www.defendingbigd.com/2012/9/10/ ... abour-laws

In what is certainly an interesting, yet not entirely unsurprising, development in the ongoing CBA negotiations between the NHL and the NHLPA the players from the Montreal Canadiens have served the league with a cease and desist letter -- citing Quebec labor laws.

The issue at hand is that the league has stated it will lockout the union on Sept. 15 if a new agreement is not reached by that date. The players have stated, time and again, that they are more than willing to continue playing this season while negotiations continue toward a new agreement. The issue at hand, apparently, is the fact that in Quebec the NHLPA is not a union and according to the Quebec Labour Board employers can only lockout players represented by a union.

From the Montreal Gazette:

At issue, according to the NHLPA, is that the players' union is not a group certified by the Quebec Labour Board. The NHLPA adds that, under Quebec law, an employer - the Canadiens, in this case - cannot lock out employees - Habs players, in this case - unless they are represented by a union certified by the QLB.

The Canadiens players, the NHLPA said Sunday night, have the right to apply to the QLB for an order that would prevent Canadiens ownership from locking players out after Sept. 15, when the CBA expires.

The Montreal Canadiens players served a 'cease and desist' letter to the owners of the team and the NHL on Friday. The letter states that unless threats of a lockout are ceased that an application will be made to the Quebec Labour Board to stop the Canadiens from lockout out the players.

Said player representative Erik Cole:

"The players are committed to reaching a fair deal with the NHL owners through CBA negotiations and we have told the NHL that the players are willing to continue to negotiate if an agreement isn't reached prior to the expiration of the CBA.

"The NHL seems content to lock out the players if an agreement isn't reached this week, and we would like the Quebec Labor Board to step in and inform them that their lockout would be in direct violation of the Quebec labor laws."

What's throwing an even more interesting twist on this is the apparent news that when the NHLPA attempted to be certified by the QLB in 2005, but the NHL opposed this measure. The NHLPA has not attempted to apply since then.

The rules surrounding the ability of a company, in this case the NHL, to lockout their employers are extremely detailed and certain measures must be taken to ensure the legalities of such an action. Because of the location of the franchises in North America, the league has had to take steps to ensure teams in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec can legally lockout the players.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour has agreed with the NHL in this matter, with the Alberta Labour Relations Board and Quebec Labour Board still needing to make decisions.

Bill Daly, NHL Deputy Commissioner, called this measure a "distraction" and that, "We will do what's legally appropriate."

All of this is essentially the expected mess that results when a league decides to lockout the players. The NFL last year witnessed the same events, as both sides scramble to gain as much leverage as the can in the ongoing negotiations. It's a game of public relations, not just legalities, with each side attempting to come out as the "good guy" to the fans and the media.

It's apparent now that the NHL is losing the PR battle in the current negotiations, when the last lockout painted the players are greedy and unwilling to accept a reasonable offer. The league has touted it's soaring revenues for a few years now and suddenly when it comes time to demand another pay cut for the players, the NHL is suddenly adamant the league is losing money and cannot sustain the current system.

With Donald Fehr now representing the NHLPA, who have suddenly shown solidarity and a willingness to stick to their proposals, the NHL is facing a much different animal than they did in 2004-05. The NHLPA is going to take as many measures as possible to prevent a lockout, even if they are in the end useless, because that furthers the narrative that it is the league preventing the season from happening and not the players.

What the players need to understand is that there is going to have to be compromise on their side as well. No other sports league in North America has the players earning anything close to 57% of revenues, however they might be defined. With the NHL earning the least of the "big four," it stands to reason that the players would not have the highest salaries of the four -- that is not the case, however.

The NHL and the NHLPA are set to meet separately this week in anticipation of the upcoming lockout on Sept. 15. Fehr and Gary Bettman have been meeting informally the past three days, yet no formal negotiations have yet to be scheduled for this week.

As it stands, the two sides are worlds apart on some very fundamental principles of how the NHL should be operated. We'll examine those principles, and the nature of these negotiations themselves, tomorrow.
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Re: Official NHL and NHLPA CBA Negotiations Thread

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So the Habs will play games against themselves during the duration of the lockout? That would get awfully boring after a while. And if what they say is true, the Montreal Expos should be awarded the 1994 world series title while we're at it since they weren't union and weren't entitled to participate in the strike.
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Re: Official NHL and NHLPA CBA Negotiations Thread

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Bob McKenzie on TSN wrote a PHENOMENAL article on the current labor negotiations issue. I would copy it in its entirety but it's way too long. I learned more from this piece than everything I've read before it.

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