After a weekend of relative silence on the collective bargaining front, the NHL announced this afternoon that they were canceling games up to December 30th, while at the same time rumors of a potential meeting between deputies Steve Fehr and Bill Daly someplace out of the watchful eye of the media began to percolate.
In spite of the theatrics and bitterness of late last week, most experts still believe that both the owners and players do not want to lose the entire 2012-13 season and will find an accommodation in time to play a 48 or 52 game schedule starting late December to mid January.
A shortened season is an inevitable reality, the players will eventually cave and give the owners term limits and a variance, but the compromise may be slightly more than five years and 5%, but after the two sides agree and the game returns, fans may have a bitter taste in their mouth and may be hesitant to return to the game after a second lockout in eight years.
The theory has been floated by Sportsnet’s Jeff Marek that the tactic of constant delay and inability to pin down the Player’s Association on particular issues is being purposely done to frustrate the owners and to potentially deter them from ever using the lockout option again, but seven, eight or ten years down the road, whenever the next collective bargaining agreement runs out, you know that inevitably one side will use the strike/lockout option to try to negotiate the best deal they can.
The fans will undoubtedly want some sort of assurance from both Commissioner Gary Bettman and PA head Donald Fehr that another labor impasse will not occur before they decide to return wholeheartedly to the game.
A potential answer to this may be found in the budgetary crisis currently being played out in the States regarding the so-called “fiscal cliff”. The Obama Administration and the Republicans who control the US House of Representatives have been at loggerheads for years regarding the federal budget, the amount of taxes and increased spending on social programs. That battle reached critical mass last year over the debt-ceiling crisis.
The crisis was averted temporarily with a short term fix, but in the event that the two sides could not come to a long term agreement, a mechanism called budget sequestration was put in place to implement automatic tax hikes and spending cuts to areas of the government that each side deemed vital.
Along with any potential new agreement, the owners and players should stipulate that negotiations need to start at the beginning of the last season, instead of the two months prior to the deal expiring as occurred this time.
If after the season concludes, the two sides still cannot agree, a temporary CBA should automatically be put in place so that the game can continue, but with aspects the both sides find so unpalatable that they will be forced to find common ground or both equally suffer consequences.
The prospect of going over the “fiscal cliff” has instilled enough fear in financial circles and in the US government that it may force each side to accept a compromise that they normally would not go for.
The prospect of another future lockout or strike may generate the same type of fears in the hockey world and we can only hope that both sides have the good sense to put measures in place that it never happens again.
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