The National Hockey League's explanation that it "ran out of time" to keep the Winter Classic on its schedule of planned events is a hollow excuse for canceling the event. When so much revenue is tied in to a one-day event, you go ahead and keep planning it in as per normal for as long as possible. Canceling 59 days ahead hardly qualified.
Was it the $3 million owed to rent Michigan Stadium? It couldn't have been. Most of the money would have been refundable right up until game day.
Was it the inability of HBO to film 24/7 this year with even the late November games already canceled? I'm sure that figured into the decision. But even with all the added exposure 24/7 provides the league and the promotional boost it gives for the Winter Classic itself, the HBO program is not more important than the event itself.
Was it a scorched-earth tactic to get the NHLPA back to the bargaining table by showing the NHLPA that Gary Bettman and the team owners are willing to cancel the entire season if they don't get their way? If so, even with the seemingly positive news that the two sides will resume formal negotiations, the NHL is cutting its own nose off to spite its face. If the NHL comes back with a lesser offer now that its signature regular season event is a goner, the talks will break down and break down quickly.
That only leaves one additional possibility. Canceling the entire November schedule and then the Winter Classic so early sent out a strong message that the NHL feels zero confidence the season will get underway in the 2012 calendar year. All that's left now is try to salvage a shortened season similar to 1994-95. But that year, the only reason a season happened at all was that the owner/league side caved to the NHLPA. Ten years later, a whole season was lost, but the NHL broke the union.
Another stupidity of this whole miserable process: As soon as a new Collective Bargaining Agreement is established, NHL teams will start looking for (and, inevitably, will find) loopholes and methods for circumventing the adjusted CBA. The cycle of owners driving up their own costs and the costs for other clubs by overpaying players and handing out long-term contracts like Halloween candy--- and then either crying poverty or simply deciding they want to keep a bigger slice of the pie -- will start all over. It always does.
If there are contract term limits put in as a cap control method to avoid front-loading, teams will still overpay and still offer maximized deals. They'll do it as a means of luring free agents. They'll do it as a means of tempting their own players to forego free agency and take a very slight "hometown discount". And they'll do it to lock up promising but still not fully proven young players in the hopes that the contract will seem like a bargain a couple seasons down the road.
In short, the way NHL teams do business won't change much. The players themselves aren't going to be needing food stamps even if the "make whole" mechanisms on existing contracts aren't entirely to their liking.
So, why again are we here? Why is there no NHL season when the league was in a period of unprecedented growth and a work stoppage was hardly what the teams who were NOT doing well financially needed?
Why is the NHLPA still primarily concerned with currying public favor and making sure they "get every cent" of existing contracts when the revenue pie they're quibbling over how to divide in half keeps getting smaller?
Why is the NHLPA doing things like name-dropping the sponsor of the Winter Classic in its press release yesterday? It was no coincidence that Donald Fehr's statement on the cancellation referred to the event as the "2013 Bridgestone Winter Classic" rather than simply calling it the Winter Classic. Doing so is a not-so-subtle and very public reminder to the League that it has to answer to its corporate sponsors for canceling the event.
In short, it was yet another attempt to put pressure on the other side as a counterweight to the NHL showing the union it meant business by canceling the Winter Classic so soon.
Frankly, all of it stinks. There are no winners here. Everyone has lost, and everyone will continue to lose so long as greed and hubris trump common sense and even business sense. A pox on both of their houses.
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I was in the pressbox in Trenton last night for the Titans' 4-2 loss to the Reading Royals. When I got back to the house to write, the internet and it did not return until early this morning. So I apologize for not having my usual rundown of results from the previous night and previews and links to all Flyers-related and prospect-related games for the current day. I also felt it was more pressing right now to comment on the loss of the Winter Classic.
On Sunday or Monday, I'll have a weekend-in-review blog that looks at the Phantoms games from this weekend (they were 4-1 losers last night) as well as the ECHL's Titans. For now, here are some quick hits from yesterday's AHL and ECHL games:
*
Harry Zolnierczyk scored the lone Adirondack goal in their 4-1 loss to Syracuse last night, assisted by
Cullen Eddy and
Sean Couturier. The Phantoms' ongoing struggles with the power play (0-for-7 last night, and 10 percent for the season to date) and their lack of forwards who can finish scoring chances have been ongoing themes early in the season. The team has also been prone to some big time defensive breakdowns. The Phantoms outshot the Crunch by a 24-18 margin last night but shot themselves in the foot several times.
* Last night,
Niko Hovinen made his first start for Trenton since his injury. He played OK, all things considered, despite yielding four goals on 32 shots. He got very little help from his D on this night and that will make any goalie have a mediocre stat line before too long.
The pros: He was very good on chances in close, stoning Reading players from point-blank range on about four or five occasions. None of the goals he gave up were outright soft ones. Three were top-shelfers, two of which came from wide-open shooters who had a good look at the net. The other was a secondary rebound on a scramble around the net.
The cons: The 6-foot-7 goalie went down too early as he was beaten up high on three of the four goals he gave up (two to the stick side, one to the glove side), left numerous rebounds in the opposite slot (something that AHL and certainly NHL opponents would pounce on), struggled several times to stop pucks behind the net on routine dump-ins and looked slow on his recoveries and lateral movement.
*
Marcel Noebels continued his streak of having scored points in every regular season game that Trenton has played. He produced an assist on Bryan Haczyk's second period power play goal that temporarily tied the score at 1-1. Noebels fired a heavy shot from the right circle and the rebound was quickly potted by Haczyk.
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