July 19, 2012, NHL owners hypocrisy column for HockeyPrimeTime.com
The Point: HYPOCRITE$ |
Columns | |||
Written by Denis Gorman | |||
Thursday, July 19, 2012 18:15 | |||
With the Collective Bargaining Agreement ending in September, the owners have been spending a lot of time crying poor. This off season has seen some of those owners dig into their pockets anyway. |
The universal truth about warfare is the best attack is the one that your adversary never saw coming.
Just
ask the Philadelphia Flyers, who signed Nashville Predators restricted
free agent defenseman Shea Weber to a 14-year offer sheet early Thursday
morning.
According
to TSN NHL reporter Darren Dreger, who broke the story, Nashville will
be compensated by the Flyers in the form of either four first round
draft picks or two first round picks, a second round pick and a third
round pick if they are unable to match the offer for the cornerstone
defenseman. Dreger also reported that Weber could earn as much as $26
million in one year.
Sportsnet’s
Nick Kypreos subsequently reported that Weber would earn $110 million
over the life of the deal, including $68 million in signing bonuses
spanning the contract’s first six years.
Nashville
General Manager David Poile has publicly vowed to match any offer for
the 26-year old. Weber, a two-time finalist for the Norris Trophy, has
totaled 263 points (99 goals and 164 assists) in 480 games and has a
plus-44 rating. He played in 78 games last season, finishing with 19
goals and 49 points, and was plus-21.
The
reverberations from the bombshell the Flyers dropped are being felt
across the NHL landscape. But nowhere are the aftershocks being felt
more than in the league’s Midtown Manhattan offices and the NHLPA’s
offices in Toronto, where the two sides are negotiating a new collective
bargaining agreement.
Negotiating
is too weak a word to describe the discussions. Rather, the league is
once again demanding unprecedented givebacks from the players in order
for the NHL to say it has righted its financial house without actively
having to investigate its flaws.
The
league has asked for a reduction in Hockey Related Revenue from the
current 57 percent to 46 while eliminating arbitration. They also have
asked to cap contracts at five years, dropping the cap ceiling from $8
million over the midpoint to $4 million and increasing the service time
from seven NHL seasons to 10 before a player can become an unrestricted
free agent.
“They’re
proposals we believe need serious consideration for us to move
forward,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters in New York
Wednesday following a nearly 2 ½ hour session with the NHLPA.
The owners’ stance is equal parts hypocrisy and chutzpah.
Bettman
announced before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final that the league had
another record-setting year in revenues, pulling in $3.3 billion.
Then
consider Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold’s woe-are-we tale in the
Apr. 11, 2012, edition of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Leipold
told the newspaper that the Wild are “not making money, and that's one
reason we need to fix our system. We need to fix how much we're spending
right now. [The Wild's] revenues are fine. We're down a little bit in
attendance, but we're up in sponsorships, we're up in TV revenue. And so
the revenue that we're generating is not the issue as much as our
expenses. And [the Wild's] biggest expense by far is player salaries."
Somehow,
the destitute Leipold was able to scrape together a mere $204.95
million for free agents Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, Jake Dowell, Zenon
Konopka and Torrey Mitchell.
Are
there franchises in financial peril? Absolutely. Forbes Magazine
reported that 18 of the league’s 30 franchises lost money. Yet nowhere
in the league’s proposal is there an implementation of revenue sharing.
Instead,
the owners are free to continue to spend wildly while the players—you
know, the people you pay to see—have to subsidize a league that will not
consider relocating franchises from struggling markets unless
absolutely necessary. That is not a partnership, no matter the spin from
the league.
Rather, that is an abusive relationship; one in which the league views its premier assets—the players—as means to an end.
You can follow us on Twitter @HockeyPrimeTime and @DenisGorman
|
||
Last Updated on Friday, July 20, 2012 14:19 |
http://www.hockeyprimetime.com/news/columns/hpyocrite
<< Home