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It's Labor Day, and there's not a lot to talk about. Collective bargaining agreement negotiations are the only relevant news topic these days, and the longer this carries on, the more insane opinions become.
On both sides.
The
Montreal Gazette posted a piece yesterday in an attempt to vilify Gary Bettman. I have exhausted this specific issue and how I feel about the good-guy // bad-guy approach by the media -- more or less, it's asinine, and the only reason we continue to look for friends and enemies of the game is to fit a comfortable narrative that's easy to sell to the collective.
I haven't read much of Jack Todd's work, but early returns suggest he's succumbed to the same pitfalls most other media types have -- an overarching tendency to paint in broad strokes and, perhaps more accurately, scapegoat.
Judging by his piece, Todd clearly sides with the NHLPA during the labor negotiations. As an opinion editorial, I'm not going to scrutinize over one man's belief(s). I will, however, suggest that many of his talking points -- and the central thesis of his column -- is mystifying at best.
Below, I have collected a few of the more polarizing paragraphs from the column.
Bettman has the cheek of a cat burglar, the determination of a pit bull and the stubbornness of a mule. He treats hockey fans like a bunch of monkeys and his latest offer to the NHLPA was pure, unadulterated horse patootie.
Bettman’s most recent stunt was so cute, it could have been a Kodak Moment. First, he hit the players with an “offer” that was more like a rollback to 1994. Then, when he softened that “offer” ever so slightly, he made like he had offered an enormous concession.
I'll ignore the assailment through sharply-toned rhetoric throughout -- his condescending lead-off about Bettman is a common fixture through the entire column. It's the other part -- the one that blissfully ignores the PA's proposal in between the NHL's offer and second-offer, one that was
equally ridiculous.
To the hardcore hockey fan, it's easy to skim over the lead, especially because the details are already known to the end-user. To the more casual observer, though, the understanding of this singular sentences misses a salient point: Neither party has submitted an offer that's close to realistic at this point in time.
Todd continues on:
Bettman is like a bully neighbour who knocks on your door and says he’s going to be taking your house, your wife, your kids, your cars and your dog. You mutter something about places where the sun don’t shine and he leaves.
Two weeks later, the neighbour is back. Just to prove what a nice guy he is, he says, he’s willing to make concessions. He’s still going to take the house, the wife, the kids and the cars — but this time, he’s willing to let you keep the dog and live in the basement.
It's a lot of he, and he, and he. Bettman's been a major player in these negotiations, but he's serving in the interests of ownership, and ownership only. If Todd -- or anyone else -- feels that the NHL is in the wrong, perhaps they should consider if the end-target of their malice is the actual wrongdoer. The owners are the ones that want a bigger piece of the pie; not Gary Bettman.
More:
Mercifully, Donald Fehr is something less than a complete, unadulterated fool. He knows that with the league boasting about how revenue has increased from $2.1 billion to $3.3 billion since the last Bettman Lockout, there is no reason whatsoever for any of this.
[And, a supporting argument..]
Truth is, guys, you wouldn’t play for free – even if you had the talent, which you don’t. You wouldn’t stand up to the stress of 100 brutally difficult games every year, you wouldn’t help earn $3.3 billion for the owners last year, you wouldn’t risk the dark underworld of concussions night after night, you wouldn’t put world-class skills on display for free
Here's where the train completely derails. I think Fehr and Bettman are pretty comparable at this stage of the game. Both are pretty competent negotiators, and the stalemate right now is certainly a product of such.
Todd, obviously, feels that this isn't the case. Again, it's not an opinion I share, but it is what it is.
The facts to support his argument, though, are pretty foolish. The mention that the league is towing $3.3B in
earnings is either a complete lie or the poorest use of verbiage in the history of written word. The $3.3B number is where revenues currently stand -- earnings is the amount left over after cutting revenues all expenses. Fifty-seven percent of this number, currently, accounts for player salaries alone.
Let's continue on:
All the NHL needs is some meaningful revenue sharing. It needs to tell Ed Snider to stop behaving like the biggest hog at the trough: Snider’s Flyers tried to wreck the small-market Nashville Predators with an absurd offer to restricted free-agent Shea Weber, which the Predators were forced to match.
I'll just present that without commentary. Besides,
I've already written about how sophomoric that take really is.
Todd's conclusion ends with the straw man of all straw men:
All that is a lot of horse hockey and the guys who are saying it are a bunch of pathetic wannabes who haven’t done their homework. NHL players lay it on the line every night. Their seasons are like running a marathon and getting hit by 230-pound defencemen along the way.
I’d love to see some of these “I’d play for free” numskulls out on an NHL rink, night after night. Humiliating themselves in public, taking NHL hits, seeing how their bodies wear down after even two weeks at that pace. It’s a dumb thing to say, fellas — especially when you can’t back it up.
Look, I don't know anyone with half of a brain that suggests the players should work for free. Usually, that kind of sharp-tone is saved for moments of pure frustration. I've seen similarly dumb statements from the other end, too. You take it with a grain of salt and understand that frustration is playing center stage here -- nothing more, nothing less.
The problem is that Todd tows this as the norm, then smacks back with some condescending talk about how fans don't understand the rigors of the eighty-two game (plus..) season a player often endures.
Again, that might be the case in small instances. I would have to believe that a majority of fans appreciate both parties and their respective risks here. Owners take a lot of the financial, players take a lot of the mental and physical. No, the media -- nor the fans -- will probably ever experience these rigors first-hand. But, empirical evidence alone suggests that the money earned by businesses through operation and the money earned by players as employees is, largely, deserved.
I alluded to it earlier, but the most bewildering detail of this whole CBA negotiation stuff -- and this spans far beyond simply Todd's column -- is the media's propensity to launch attacks -- some entirely too personal -- against Gary Bettman. All of the arguments that should be used against ownership have seemingly been misdirected onto the shoulders of Gary Bettman, a professional whose focal responsibility is to protect the interests of the aforementioned. It's no different than the player agents like Allan Walsh who continue to work for the best interests of clients, but the media has yet to draw that rather obvious parallel for a variety of reasons. Here's one: They have a dog in the fight.
That's not to absolve Bettman from any and all blame, though. He's had his fair share of blunders as commissioner of the National Hockey League. Lyle Richardson
pointed out as much in a recent column, and I think his points are valid:
The attempted purchase of the NY Islanders by con man John Spano in 1996-97, disgraced financier William “Boots” Del Biaggio’s attempt to purchase 24 percent of the Predators in 2007, and the fiasco of the short-lived ownership of the Tampa Bay Lightning by “OK Hockey” were significant embarrassments. The handling of the infamous “No Goal” in the 1999 Stanley Cup Final was another notable black eye. Bettman remains haunted by his claim during the last lockout that NHL ticket prices would drop if the league achieved its cost certainty. The well-documented efforts to keep the Phoenix Coyotes in Arizona is an ongoing soap opera. He’s also come under criticism for his comments last December suggesting there wasn’t enough data linking concussions to the brain condition known as CTE.
These are all legitimate, and the blame for each incident individually could -- and maybe should -- be levied on the shoulders of Bettman himself.
CBA negotiations are another animal entirely. Bettman's stuck in the unfortunate position of presenting himself as a leader of owners, selling the agendas of twenty-nine very different business leaders to the PA, media, and fan base in a billionaire v. millionaire argument. It's a nearly impossible feat to look like the above-referenced good guy in this situation, but I think Bettman's done a decent job to-date. He may look like a tough negotiator, but that's no different than PA head-man Doanld Fehr. Some would say he's been a bit more cutthroat, but I'd argue that, alternatively, he's just been a bit more genuine about where his party stands in terms of negotiations.
Back with more tomorrow.
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