MORE HOT AIR IN NHL TALKS
Mistrust could mean a blow-up looms, writes Bruce Arthur
Threats and bluffs, omens and lies. The NHL lockout is grinding toward its moment of truth, or its moments, when we will find out whether the people involved truly mean what they say. Who is truly willing to set fire to a season? What are the two sides prepared to surrender to avoid it? And how long will it take?
That is how this week is lurching to a close, after a flurry of proposals and counter-proposals between the league and its players; another threat of antitrust litigation, another day spent delaying and dithering and squabbling over scraps. And the threat of a blow-up is more present than ever. It might even be necessary.
Once again, the players’ use of a disclaimer of interest arose. On Wednesday night, NHLPA executive director Don Fehr let a midnight deadline to issue a disclaimer lapse as the two sides negotiated past that time; the players then apparently believed that after the deadline passed, the NHL hardened its terms. When he met the media, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said the two sides were supposed to meet Thursday morning at 10 a.m. Fehr was more evasive.
And Thursday there was no full bargaining session into the early evening, the players began a re-vote to authorize a disclaimer with a 48-hour window, and they leaked that this time the weapon would be used. In theory this could mean a deadline of 6 p.m. Saturday night for negotiations to greatly improve, with the threat of union dissolution and lawsuits looming, but it depends on what the players set as a deadline to actually use the hammer. It’s another deadline that may or may not be artificial, depending on who you believe. But it came because the players believed the threat of disclaimer would allow them to get a better deal. The league seems like it has decided to dance, and the players believe they are responding with the only lever they have.
The potential consequences are unknown. Bettman has consistently dismissed the importance of the disclaimer of interest, even after the league went to court with a pre-emptive challenge in New York federal court. The league, however, has intimated a disclaimer will mean the end of negotiations, since the NHL will refuse to agree to let Fehr represent what would technically become a trade association. In other words, the players are using disclaimer as a potentially nuclear option to spur negotiations, since it could throw the lockout into the courts, where uncertainty reigns. The league is trying to remove any doubt, saying that the filing itself is a nuclear act, and that it will take the season with it.
The league seems like it has decided to dance, and the players believe they are responding with the only lever they have.
Threats and bluffs, omens and lies. In the NBA negotiations of 2011, the two sides settled 12 days after the NBA Players’ Association disclaimed and went to court. In the NHL, this is apparently what happens when the deadline set by Bettman for a 48-game season is still eight days away, and the two sides have hit a wall. There was always a question of what would happen when one of these sides decided to trust the other.
So Thursday, instead of a full negotiation, the two sides had a small meeting in the morning after the league attempted to change the statute of limitations on violations of the reporting of hockey-related revenues in one proposal; the players believed the changes were hidden, the league insisted they were not, and while the terms were returned to their original state, it was said to foster a little more mistrust. A little after that, it was revealed the re-vote by players would begin at 6 p.m., and that the NHLPA filed a motion to dismiss the NHL’s filing in New York federal court. The motion is scheduled to be heard Monday.
Maybe it will all help push the sides closer to a deal. Maybe it will fall apart.
There are common areas. The league has agreed to two buyouts per team to help clubs ease the transition to a lower salary-cap figure, and the players have agreed that those buyouts will still count against the players’ share, thus keeping the money in the system, as the NHL likes to say. The biggest issue — the split on revenue — is still at 50-50, plus $300 million U.S. to the players, which is probably $300 million more than the owners expected when this thing began.
The players have come down from a $67-million US salary cap in 2013-14 to $65 million; the owners are stuck at $60 million, so as not to raise the salary floor above $44 million in order to protect the weaker franchises — and save the league’s powerhouse clubs that much more money. The pension liability, which was supposed to be a settled issue, is still a major concern for the players.
Essentially, they are fighting over $150 million in salary-cap space in 2013-14, which might be clawed back by escrow anyway. They are fighting over pensions, which the league had previously agreed to, and which constitutes a rowboat of potential financial liability in what will eventually be a small ocean of revenue. They are fighting over some structural niceties that, in the end, are not a hill that anybody should die on. (The NHLPA reportedly will take a 10-year CBA with an optout after seven years; the NHL wants an opt-out after eight. Player contract term limits are believed to have a similarly minor difference.)
They are using the clock, jockeying for whatever is left. This is the calculated bravado that grips the endgame, and may even cause it. Whose threats do you believe? Whose bluffs will you call? Which omens matter, and which ones are air?
This is how the lockout ends. Or, if someone miscalculates badly enough, doesn’t.