EIGHT EASY WAYS TO END LOCKOUT
The NHL lockout has lasted more than a month, and a key Thursday deadline awaits for the league to hold a full season. What needs to happen for the lockout to end?
1 Individual contracts have to be honored
Players are more unified on this issue than they were about preventing a salary cap in 2004-05. Owners have no one to blame but themselves. Teams were way too eager to sign players to long-term deals this summer (such as 13-year, $98 million deals to Zach Parise and Ryan Suter), and now the impression is that they signed those players thinking the deals would be reduced by the new labor agreement. Does that seem like good-faith bargaining ?
2 Deal has to end with a true 50-50 split
That has been the owners’ objective from the beginning, and there will have to be an absolute of at least the final two years of the deal. Players are offering legitimate concessions, but they still are dancing around the 5050 number.
3 Players need to win on vast majority of secondary issues
When you are asking players for more than $1 billion in concessions, you can’t also ask them to accept a longer wait for free agency, reduced arbitration rights or more restrictive individual contract conditions.
4 Stop trying to win public relations war
The PR war is over, and both sides lost. Fans generally are blaming both sides for the lack of progress, and it will be a PR disaster for both sides if there is no season. Nobody wins the blame game.
5 The stars have to be the stars
Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr are experienced at high-level negotiations, and they need to get in a room and talk about an end game to this lockout. Straight talk. No spin. No news conferences afterward.
6 Players need to embrace practicality instead of principle
Both sides think this will end in November and the season will start after Thanksgiving. With that scenario, players would lose about five weeks (roughly 19.2%) of their pay, a bigger cut than the NHL is seeking with a drop in the players’ share from 57% to 50%. Players should make another offer this week to give themselves a chance to play a full season and not miss any paychecks.
7 Owners must accept this isn’t 2004-05
Fehr has done a masterful job of unifying his group. Players say they are much better informed than they were the last time around. Owners can’t target the NHLPA’s No. 2 man, either, because the job is held by Fehr’s brother, Steve, who is highly experienced and seems to be the likely successor when Fehr retires. The NHL won’t wear down this group.
8 Stop playing serve-and-volley on proposals
Does it matter whose turn it is to make a proposal? Instead of worrying about who blinked first, or if they look weak by making two proposals in a row, let’s concentrate on getting a proposal. They have to get in a room this week and make a painful effort to reach a deal that will allow a full season to be played. Both sides would have to feel some pain to make this compromise work. It might help if they simply talk about the $1.65 billion they are arguing instead of percentages, and then work back from the money to the percentages.