Gridlock, and it’s getting personal
Parties talk to everyone but each other as the deadline for contract grows near
NEW YORK — Gary Bettman said he had no news. Don Fehr said he had no updates. So while the NHL and its players were both in Manhattan on Thursday, they stood in separate spotlights and delivered soliloquies to the world, but not to each other, because they’ve all heard them already anyway. Lockout starts Saturday night. Mark your calendar.
“Less money, fewer rights,” said Fehr, the NHLPA’s executive director. “I think everybody understands why the owners would like that; every employer would like that. I have a more difficult time understanding why anybody would expect the players to make an agreement on that basis.”
“The system that was originally negotiated, in our view, needs some adjustments,” said Bettman, the NHL’s commissioner. “If it turned out to be too rich a deal for the first seven years, we lived with it, but I’m not going to apologize for saying … we need to adjust it.”
The league said the players proposed a deal that would actually increase what they were paid, and the league already believes they are being paid too much. The players said the owners delivered an offer that was nothing but clawbacks. Of a lockout, Fehr said “It’s not a requirement; it’s not something anybody has to do.”
The league, clearly, disagrees. And a sampling of the 283 players in attendance makes them sound like men sick of staring down the barrel of a gun, and sick of the guy holding it. It’s not a good sign.
“Our goal all along has been to work out some kind of partnership, as you can see in our proposal,” Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller said. “What it really comes down to for me is Gary’s been running this business for 20 years, and so if he’s operated at a loss for how many of those years, how is he still in a position of leadership, or even have a job?
“This is a squeeze. And it’s got to be more about hockey.”
The players are sick of the league’s first proposal, which pushed them on every front, hard, even if it was basically a warning shot. They are sick of the notion that after giving so much back the last time, they are being asked to do it again.
They believe their proposal, which is designed to boost revenue sharing to poorer teams while also protecting their own take-home dollars, is fair.
The players haven’t even been pushed yet but they feel like they’ve been backed into a corner. And as Fehr put it, hockey players tend to fight their way out of corners.
“How do we win? We’ve already lost,” Calgary Flames forward Mike Cammalleri said. “We’ve given money back. Our proposal has huge concessions. Overall senti- ment as a player coming out of this is we looked it up and down and our proposal is beyond fair, beyond equitable, it’s beyond something that the owners should be excited about, it has huge concessions, it addresses problems, makes for a healthier league.
“They just want to take more. Use leverage to squeeze more and see how much can I get out of you? It’s like the bully in the playground saying, I took your peanut butter sandwich, I’m going to take your chocolate chip cookies, too.”
Jarome Iginla said players felt bullied, too; Sidney Crosby said that despite having missed so much time recently, despite wanting so badly to be back on the ice, “you also have to realize that there’s principles here. And you have to understand what’s right.”
When asked why the players don’t just propose a zero per cent increase in year one, Cammalleri scoffed, saying he doubted the league would accept it. When asked if that meant he didn’t trust Bettman, Cammalleri said, “Would you?”
The players have done this dance with Bettman before, and the institutional memory lingers; as Boston Bruins defenceman Andrew Ference put it, when asked if this were a battle for the future, said “For the PA, or for the sport? I mean, how many times can you revisit this, with a lockout looming? How many times can you do that before people get fed up?”
“This is a squeeze. And it’s got to be more about hockey.”
SABRES’ RYAN MILLER
“All I can say to you about that is leaving this room, after two days of looking each other in the eye and saying, ‘What would you really take? Like, right now? What would you be willing to miss a paycheque for?’ — right now, after countless hours of that discussion happening in small groups, in big groups, in an out of that room, everyone looks at our proposal and says, how can that not be what we take?” Cammalleri said.
“They haven’t addressed any of the problems that we know would make the league healthier. Of course they don’t want to fix those problems. Because they want to be able to do this again next time, right?”
It’s all talk, because right now there’s nothing to do but talk and then engage in a pregnant silence as the current CBA quietly passes away Saturday night.
If players don’t trust Bettman, it’s going to take longer. If players are pushed too hard, it’s going to take longer. Eventually, these soliloquies will become a dialogue, a real one. Eventually the talk will produce something real.