Nhl
 

The hockey zillionaires are teasing us again about MAYBE ending the walkout and returning to the rinks for a short version of a season. My daughter, who is a Toronto Maple Leaf fan says she doesn't care because right now the Leafs are tied for first place. They also say in Toronto (maybe an old joke) that the Leafs are just like the Titanic, "great till they hit the ice". My team because of where I live is the Anaheim Ducks and Teemu Selanne. They also are tied for first place. I liked hockey, but less and less every day now.

Truthfully I rather see no season so the owners and players learn to negotiate while running a business.
What they did only shows they care more about the money than the love of the game and respect for the fans.

I didn't follow the negotiating that close but I did hear the union turned down 50/50 split...that seems generous to me. I know the owners don't make money without the players but the players dont have a job without the owners. I thought 50/50 make perfect sense.

It was more than just the 50-50 split, biggest thing now is the salary cap, last year it was 70 mil and the owners want it at 60 mil

I haven't followed the strike either, but how would a 50/50 split work if the incoming revenue split would support say a 65 mil cap? Would each player get a distribution?

So for example 50/50 split with Salary cap of 60 mil
Revenue =125
Players get 60 due to salary cap
Owners get 62.5 million due to 50/50 split

What happens to the remaining 2.5 million?

I used to love playoff hockey prior to the last strike, but probably haven't watched more than 2 games since then. Eff them all.

I believe the owners are totally at fault for this one reason: they demanded and got the current CBA. Now they want to take away what the players conceded to.
I hope that the players will hold a grudge and continue the strike. If you have followed the negotiations since late summer you will see that there was a lot of insults thrown at the players back in the early going and the players said up yours...

On a totally different note: maybe Tim Thomas saw this coming and was a genius when he said he wanted to take a season off.

Also what is it without a conspiracy theory: this whole thing was done because the league wanted to make sure Sid the Crybaby was well enough to come back before they started playing hockey again. Sorry, couldn't resist. SmileWavy

I'm a Fan and miss it but not a fan of the players this time. Not really a fan of the owners either.

My 6yr old son is in Tyke little league and we are having a blast with it. He won some hockey cards "NHL 2013" at a tourney and now it's just not the same flipping through them as it was in the 70's and 80's when I was growin' up. It's all about money now vs winning or teambuilding it seems.

Hey Joe, I am in agreement with you on this one. A lot of folks out there have the misconception this is a player driven thing when in fact the opposite is true. Bettman et al. are attempting to cover the respective a$$es & the financial losses of some irresponsibly owned &/or mismanaged teams in the league. In the cold light of day, there are some teams that will never be successful & should fold.

Cheers
JB

The big picture is most of the public doesn't know who to blame so the whole sport is blamed.

Like the fiscal cliff - we blame all politicians because we don't know all the details.

Bottomline for me is neither situations (political or NHL) should ever be made an issue nor be something the public knows about.

This stuff should all be settled behind closed doors and quickly. In a perfect world.

It is extremely complicated, the league uses projected revenue, sets the cap high, puts payroll money in escrow, and then refunds what is left over.

Your last sentiment is what most people feel.

Both are to blame; the owners are blind to the damage they are doing to the game. The players are being being duped by the union, they will never come close to recovering what they lose this year alone, let alone lost future (shared) revenue.

The owners did get the deal they wanted, but they failed to foresee the manner that the agents (and the other owners) would corrupt the process. They also failed to set the floor low enough to allow low income teams to survive.

The owners want the players to bear the brunt of the teams that lose money, the players want the wealthy teams to subsidize the poor sisters.

The root cause is a) no large TV contract (in the USA) to support the payrolls, and b) too many small market teams that aren't financially viable. But parsing off the weak teams would undermine Mr. Betman's master plan of ever increasing franchise value. The reality is he has built a house of cards that will eventually unravel (technically I guess it will collapse), but he will be sailing into the sunset as a very wealthy man by then.

Watch this...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hdf4GeT4ELA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>