As I am dealing with a family emergency, it was with great enjoyment that I received a message from Alex asking if I would be willing to post his view on the lockout based on some of the work he has been doing related to negotiations etc. Enjoy the fresh content and new blog. Thanks, Alex.
Why There Will Be No Season
By: Alex Scharf
I recently took a negotiations course at Johns Hopkins University that focused on labor disputes, such as the one that has led to the most recent NHL Lockout. The concepts from that course shed some light on what exactly is going on in the NHL/NHLPA negotiations, the subtext of the whole fiasco, if you will. In any negotiation, there are a number of strategies that either party can use to get what they want. Now, the priorities of the various parties are not always clear at the start of the negotiations, especially when many factors are at stake, but they are often revealed through analysis of the bargaining tactics used by either party to the negotiation.
In this case, it is clear to me that the NHL has little to no interest in saving the upcoming NHL season. Here is why:
The NHL began negotiations a few months ago with an initial offer that demanded enormous concessions from the NHLPA. It was a ridiculous offer; one the owners knew was unrealistic and would not be accepted by the players. They made this offer as part of a strategy called “anchoring.” The anchoring effect is a common negotiating tactic that naturally moves the bargaining toward a certain end of the spectrum. If you think of the NHL’s position as being toward the left and the NHLPA’s towards the right, an extreme left offer by the NHL anchors the point of focus of negotiations to the left, and to the NHL’s benefit. All future offers are subconsciously compared to this initial offer, meaning a neutral offer (neither left nor right) would be viewed as being to the right of the initial offer and benefitting the players, when in fact it is perfectly neutral. As negotiations proceed, the NHL can be seen as making concessions while making offers on the left side of the spectrum, because they started at an extreme position and the new offers seem better in comparison. Anchoring is a legitimate negotiations strategy and it is used by parties that want a deal to get done. For all we knew, the owners wanted to anchor the negotiations to their side of the spectrum in order to ultimately reach an agreement that is favorable to them.
So far, I have no problem with the NHL’s actions per se. It is very possible they want to save the season and reach an agreement with the NHLPA by finding some mutually acceptable middle ground, albeit on a ground tilted in their benefit.
The negotiations continued early this week with the NHL making an offer that included multiple concessions from their previous offer. As mentioned, the anchoring effect made this offer seem like a big step when it may be exactly what the NHL wanted all along. Again, this is a legitimate negotiating tactic. The NHLPA responded by taking time to analyze the offer. That the players took the time to analyze the offer shows that they want to get a deal done. Nobody expected them to accept the offer outright. However, willing negotiators take time to analyze offers in order to figure out their opposition’s priorities on various issues. This allows them to craft a counter offer that will appeal to the opposition’s wants and needs, and begin down the road of bargaining toward agreement.
The NHLPA then made three offers back to the NHL, called Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers, or MESOs. The purpose of MESOs is to better figure out the opposition’s priorities by seeing their reaction to the various offers. If the NHL likes Offer 1 more than Offer 2, the PA can figure out what aspects of the offers made one more attractive than the other. By gathering this information, they are better equipped to make a proposal the NHL will accept. Again, like all of the previous offers, this was not expected to be accepted off the bat, but merely used as a step in the bargaining process to eventually reach agreement.
And it would have worked.
But the NHL blew it up in the water.
Gary Bettman and Co. took 15 minutes before flat out rejecting each proposal. They offered little to no insight to the PA about what features they liked and did not like. As a result, the PA is now stuck without any information or idea about how to reach an agreement with the NHL. To add insult to poor negotiations practices, the NHL said that their offer was “final,” meaning they would make no more concessions and the NHLPA could essentially take the NHL’s latest offer or leave it.
To recap:
There is no way the NHL thought the players would outright accept their latest agreement.
There is no way the NHL planned to accept the NHLPA’s counteroffer.
There is no way the NHL planned on analyzing and responding to the counteroffer, and thereby continuing down the road to agreement.
So why did the NHL make the offer at all? This strongly indicates that this whole process has been a PR ploy on the part of the NHL. The owners want to make a deal on their terms. They want their offer to be accepted, the one they wanted all along, and are not willing to make any concessions. They want to cancel the season if that’s what it takes to get what they want. There is only one problem:
They don’t want to alienate the fans.
Fans provide revenue for the league. If they abandon the NHL due to this lockout, it all comes crashing down. This is not to mention the pressure from sponsors, advertisers, and networks who all have interests in the NHL getting the show on the road. The only problem is that the NHL needs a way to reconcile these PR needs with their negotiating goals. So the owners came up with a master scheme to make them seem like the good guys and still get exactly what they want.
They threw out an anchor with their first offer, knowing it would seem unreasonable to the fans. It was meant to anchor the negotiations, not to the NHLPA, but to the fans. Then they waited for the outcry to die down, and put out their most recent offer. In contrast, it seems like a good deal. “The NHL is giving in,” cried the fans, when in fact they only offered what they wanted all along. Then, they waited for the NHLPA’s counter, only to immediately reject it and run to the media spouting nonsense about the offer being “a backward step.” Now, they seem like the good guys. The players are being greedy and not giving in. The lockout will continue, and eventually, the players will cave and come back begging for the NHL’s latest offer. Bettman will look merciful and kind, the players will look greedy and weak. The fans will not riot at NHL Headquarters and the sponsors will not jump ship. But in reality, Bettman and the owners will have simply manipulated the players, fans, sponsors, and networks to get everything they wanted.
They are going to have your cake and eat it too.
So no, I don’t think there will be an NHL season this year. And the only real reason for that is this:
The NHL wants to make a money-grab, and they will do it no matter the cost to the fans that support it.
New York Rangers Blogger • 
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