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UPDATE(3:00 PM ET): In least surprising development ever, Gary Bettman addressed the media on Wednesday and stated that the two sides have different views of the world. He's displeased with the NHLPA for their failure to address contractual issues, as well as their inability to provide a full proposal.
If you didn't expect this, you haven't read the below. Continue, please.
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The NHLPA's
alternative proposal on Tuesday was apparently quite the hit with the media and fans. Although only a small percentage of the actual proposal made it through the proper distribution channels, reviews of the NHLPA's work yesterday were largely sparkling. I'm not exactly sure why.
Perhaps Tom Gulitti at The Record
summarized it best: The NHLPA had done a masterful job of winning a battle of public relations; the rest is a complete unknown. Unlike
some of his peers, Gulitti remained quite guarded about how strong of a proposal the NHLPA actually put forward. The details that were leaking to the public were meant to drum up praise for the NHLPA side, and conversely, implicitly indict the owners side for their alleged tyranny.
He's right in more ways than one, too. The media was being fed small details of a grandiose proposal by Donald Fehr, and spitting it to the public in a way to paint the NHLPA as David in a battle against Goliath. Look -- the players will take paycuts, and the owners are the bloodthirsty, life-sucking ticks that are the sole reason for a
potential certain work stoppage!
In some ways, Fehr's strategy is genius. The PR battle was less hostile than the
Anglo-Zanzibar War; fans inherently will side with employees (or, players) over employers (or, NHL's big business) -- a common theme that transcends the game of hockey. Really, it's the only kind of leverage Fehr, et. al have in negotiations -- the power of the people. Everything else is in favor of big business, especially the most important element of all -- the threat of stoppage. Players can't afford it.
Back to the proposal, though. Fehr's camp slyly leaked details early that made the NHLPA appear to make the first real concessions, but as more elements of the deal surfaced, it became pretty obvious that the two parties still aren't close at all. One notable discrepancy, highlighted in a
brilliant breakdown by Sportsnet's Michael Grange, talks about the way the NHLPA would effectively bite back at the NHL towards the latter part of the proposed CBA:
A much bigger ask by Fehr is that in return for allowing the owners to keep the lion’s share of the league’s revenues for the next three years, the league would "snap back" to the terms of the existing CBA in year four (2015-16).
In other words, the players would once again share in 57 per cent of league revenues, just in time for the next round of CBA talks.
Continued..
For starters it would all but guarantee a lockout after the 2015-16 season as there is no way that if the owners are contemplating a lockout now to move the players off 57 per cent of HRR, they won’t be looking to do the same thing three years from now.
The idea that the players' proposal would somehow usher in a lengthy period of labour peace was the one clanging note Fehr struck Monday.
For the purposes of this negotiation it means that the gap between what the owners are asking for and what the players are willing to give remains significant, massive even.
Grange goes on to point out that, in a parallel universe where the NHL actually believes this is a decent deal and accepts, there would undoubtedly be a lockout for the 2015-2016 season. The numbers are absolutely staggering, yet were rarely discussed when the media was looking at some of the bylines of the proposal yesterday:
Assuming league revenues grow by seven per cent annually, the owners’ proposal last month would pay the players $6.79 billion over the next four years by cutting the players' share of HRR to 43.3 per cent.
Under the players' plan, they would get a minimum of $8.53 billion in that period.
There was a reason Fehr referred to the gap in the two sides’ positions as a "meaningful gulf" last week. The price tag on that gulf is about $1.74 billion.
Put another way, the owners’ plan would give the players 43.3 per cent of HRR, rolling salaries back by 24 per cent immediately. The players’ proposal would get the players about 54.4 per cent of HRR and allow them to keep every cent that’s in their current contracts.
No wonder Crosby thought the players’ plan was great — it means the contract he signed this summer will be worth $104.4 million, not the discounted version worth $76.6 million the owners would like to pay him under their proposal.
Moreover, the owners benefit in the players’ deal is theoretical, based on revenues that are expected to grow but might not. The owners’ plan means real cash savings beginning right away.
This wasn't the only hurdle in the NHLPA's proposal. Fehr, as expected, used another front to drive between the owners of small and large markets -- revenue sharing. Appealing to the small market owners and teams, Fehr's proposal included terms that would force the NHL to share the percentages won back in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement with small market clubs, creating the illusion of a stronger balance between all thirty hockey organizations.
Will it work? Remains to be seen. Donald Fehr doesn't really care, though. His goal was to create an issue where the owners individually disagree upon based on their unique circumstances. My guess is that it's going to work.
Grange's driving point -- and, I think the driving point of many -- is that the NHLPA's offer appears far more compromising on the surface. When you get down to the details, it's a pretty sharp, one-sided deal -- even if the NHL's own one-sided offer to kick-start the negotiation process was just as ridiculous.
The main difference between the two sides though, as alluded to earlier, is the coverage of each proposal. Fehr's effectively vilified ownership in short-order; the owners are expecting to issue a response shortly to the first proposal, and my guess is that their resounding no -- even if it's entirely justified -- is going to create an even bigger rift between big business and fans.
The end-consumer -- the fan -- isn't wrong to want hockey, nor is he wrong to expect good faith bargaining and negotiating from all parties involved. Don't let some mouthpieces fool you right now, though. The NHL // NHLPA really aren't close, and when the NHL strikes back with another ridiculous one-sided offer, you shouldn't be surprised.
Why? Because
both are to blame for this mess.
Back with more as it comes.
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Thanks for reading!
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