How contentious is the relationship between Donald Fehr and Gary Bettman at this point in the lockout?
Two weeks ago, the answer was that there was mutual animosity but nothing resembling the decade-long blood feud between Bettman and Bob Goodenow that manifested in the last work stoppage.
But after this week's failed negotiations in Toronto, it's getting a little nasty. To wit, Donald Fehr to the Ottawa Sun in their Q&A this morning:
"I don't go in for the very dramatic 'I am very disappointed' press conferences that other people engage in."
He's right: This was a tad dramatic. Maybe it was the creepy black backdrop.
The full details on the NHLPA's offer have been leaked to the media, and you can read them on USA Today's site. Please remember that the NHL was slammed by the players for making theirs public. Silly League: leak it next time. Here's Fehr's memo on the third option from the players:
Wrote Fehr: "This means that an individual player under an existing contract would receive the 13% segregated, plus a normal payment, subject to escrow, of 87% of his salary. A player with a new contract would have 100% of his salary subject to the 50-50 split. However, since the 13% of existing contracts are off the cap, this should create more cap space, which will be important as the cap will be squeezed. Over time, the existing contracts expire, and the share will fall towards 50%."
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly had publicly objected to this proposal, saying players would get a 56% to 57% share in the first year and he doubted that the split would ever reach 50-50.
Fehr and Bruce Garrioch had a conversation on Friday that you can read here, and there are a few reactions to it, beginning with:
• Stop with the history lessons. Just stop. Yes, the NHL's owners are likely influenced by the concessions won by their NBA brethren. Yes, their first offer to the players in July was a joke wrapped in a farce wrapped in a 24-percent rollback that set these talks back months due to its ridiculous demands. Yes, the basis for the owners' claims for contractual restrictions and suppression of salaries can be hypocritical and downright nonsensical.
But you know what? Their motivations aren't the issue.
You're not going to shame them into a resolution by repeatedly pointing out that the lockout is built on a shaky premise or that basketball did it first. We all know it is, and most of the owners know it to.
But on Oct. 20, we should be past the "why?" and deal with the "how?"
[Related: NHL and NHLPA wasting time with scare tactics and PR stunts]
• Two questions of note from the Garrioch interview, including this one that's frankly leading the witness a bit:
QMI: Why does the league not want to honour the deals that were signed?
FEHR: "They want to pay less money. That's all. It's really very simple: 'We've agreed to pay to the dollar all the contracts we've signed.' We've now decided that's more money than we'd like to pay.' The reason we made the last proposal the way we did was simply because they want to move toward 50-50. The players have already indicated they are willing to do that over time. The question is: Should you agree to honour the contracts you signed between now and then? Players think that's a straight-forward thing to do and not an unusual thing to do. It's sort of the way everybody does business."
The "make whole" provision the NHL proposed tries to give the owners what they want (an immediate reduction in player costs) and the players what they want (the full value of their contracts, through deferred payment). No one can blame the players for being suspicious or mistrustful about the League's proposal, because the NHL has done little to earn that trust in this negotiation or through its actions back in 2005.
That said, Nick Cotsonika nailed it: This was a path for the NHLPA to achieve its primary objective, and "they could have proposed that it come out of the owners' share instead. They didn't."
The players deserve the full value of their contracts, and any NHL proposal that doesn't achieve that is garbage. But there's no question the League's latest salvo showed a desire to fulfill that obligation through some creative accounting; it's just a matter of whether the numbers add up and who pays for it. Which is why the NHLPA should build off that idea. It has potential.
• This was also interesting, regarding the PR victory for the League this week in gaining major sympathy from the fans:
QMI: What's your message to fans who have spent the past couple of days calling players "greedy" after the 50-50 offer from the league?
FEHR: "It's pretty hard to treat seriously the notion that the athletes, who are the only people who anybody comes to watch, that they would be greedy in the face of a 24% reduction in their pay last time; billions of dollars went to the owners, not the players; seven years of record revenues that was more than anybody thought. The result of all that success is for the owners to say, 'OK, now we want to renegotiate all the contracts again and we want to lower them.' My message to the fans is: I don't think that characterization hits the facts very well. Hockey players are pretty down-to-earth people. That's why fans like and identify with them. They want to do the right thing. The right thing here happens to be proceeding in a way which is not merely, 'Oh the owners asked for billions of dollars I guess we have to give it to them because who are we? Hockey players.' "
Fehr is completely right here.
It's been stunning to witness fans and media turn off their brains and swallow up the NHL's talking points out of an insatiable desire to have an 82-game schedule. There's been way too much "oh, they went 50/50, take the deal boys!"; it's a sentiment that exists without regard for the contractual concessions the players would have to make, the revenue sharing system and other considerations that make "50/50" an unbalanced deal.
We ask these men to sacrifice their bodies on a nightly basis. We ask them to sweat and fight and bleed, to show resolve that many of us couldn't imagine having in pressure situations.
And then we expect them to fold like origami when the League finally makes a mature, quasi-equitable proposal?
Again, it's a credit to Bettman and the NHL (and Frank Luntz) that the proposal and the PR blitz worked this week. But like Fehr said: If you're a "greedy players" person, that characterization doesn't hit the facts very well.
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On Friday, the NHL canceled the 2012-13 schedule through Nov. 1, bringing the grand total of games missed to 135. Friday was supposed to be the home opener at Nationwide Arena for the Columbus Blue Jackets as they hosted the Vancouver Canucks.
To drown their sorrows, fans gathered at R Bar, the local establishment right near Nationwide to ponder what might have happened against the defending Presidents' Trophy winners. But it wasn't just going to be a normal night at R Bar. The place had organized an event surrounding the X Box simulation of what should have been the game against the Canucks.
Then things -- in the words of Champ Kind -- jumped up a notch.
The team's anthem singer, Leo Welsh, showed up to perform the National Anthem before the "game" and later in the evening members of the Blue Jackets television and radio broadcast teams made an appearance to do some work.
From The Dark Blue Jacket:
Long about the third period, something momentous happened. The 'boys' showed up. That's right. Jeff Rimer, Bill Davidge, and George Matthews all came to participate in the camaraderie of the night. It was great having them in the bar that night. But then the treat started. From their well deserved perch at the bar, George Matthews and Bill Davidge proceeded to call the simulated game. For yours truly this was a blast from the past back to old radio days. Additionally, there are certain freedoms that happen when one is not subject to FCC regs on over the air broadcasts, and George and Bill took perfect advantage of the liberties to give an exciting and heartfelt call to the simulated game, supported by raucous cheering of the patrons.
Blue Jackets blog Arch City Army shot a quick video of the festivities:
The EA Sports game kept its realism and the Canucks were victorious in the end, but on the day when the future of the actual hockey season was put further in doubt, those Blue Jackets fans got to experience something really cool on what otherwise was going to be a normal Friday night at the bar.
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Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy
The ECHL Kalamazoo Wings opened up their 2012-13 home schedule on Friday night with a 1-0 win over the Fort Wayne Komets — a game played under the shadow of the mothership from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
Oh, sorry, our mistake: That's actually the new scoreboard at Wings Stadium, part of a $2 million renovation. (Click here for a larger image of this monstrosity.)
According to MLive.com, it's "40 feet by 12.5 feet by 12 feet and [weighs] more than 12,000 pounds." In other words, the scoreboard covers 20 percent of the ECHL team's rink.
We don't want to say that the K-Wings are proudly flaunting their new scoreboard, but this video is the equivalent of Michael Fassbender in skinny jeans:
But here's the thing about the new toy: It's a little too large to be that low to the ice.
Justin Cohn of the Journal Gazette, one of our favorite minor league scribes, checks in from the game last night:
You have to realize, this is a really small building. The only thing I can equate this thing to is the Cowboys Stadium one, because it's proportionally so big, but more because it's so close to the ice.
The first game tonight, the puck didn't hit it, but it came close. I could see potential for hitting the scoreboard five times a game, any really high lifts into the air.
In other words, don't expect to see any Kopitar-ish rainbow passes. Or flip dumps on the penalty kill. Or Zdeno Chara ever being able to skate through center ice without ducking. You know, should he ever end up in the ECHL for some reason …
Congrats to the K-Wings on their new scoreboard. We always wanted to know what it would look like if every HDTV in Best Buy was glued together and all tuned to the Kiss-Cam at the same time.
s/t Justin Cohn for the image.
One of the things that's always bugged me about rink board advertising in the NHL is how unoriginal it is. Most companies just stamp their logo on the space they've been allotted and call it a day.
But leave it to a company called Boost Creative to get, well, creative:
OK, the guy above the printed skirt lines up perfectly.
That's the visitors bench at the Germain Arena in Estero, Fla., where the ECHL Kelly Cup champion Florida Everblades play. The image comes to us via Everblades blog Swamp Hockey:
Winning the Kelly Cup has brought many things to Germain Arena, including sponsors. This year's ice is decorated to the max with sponsorship logos. Some of the dasher board ads are creative and definitely got a laugh from me.
"Visual media is our launch pad," says the Boost Creative website, and they certainly catch the eye with this emasculating ad, which will remain in place for the entire Everblades season.
Chris Palin, the Everblades' vice president of sales and marketing, says the team has had one or two complaints about sexism so far. But that's the nature of advertising on the edge, says Palin.
"You want to evoke emotion, that's OK. As long as you don't get a ton of complaints, that's what it supposed to do."
Other than that, the reaction has been mostly positive. In the home opener, when the visitors bench appeared on the Jumbotron, the fans went nuts. "It was by far the loudest cheer of the night. It was hilarious."
There's more, too: Since the above photo was taken in the preseason, another cheeky ad has gone up behind the visitors bench. It's for an exterminator:
Thus far, there haven't been any complaints from the opposition, says Palin. But who cares if they complain? They're the opposition.
"It's a little home cooking," says Palin. "You gotta do whatever you can to keep that home-ice advantage."
Here are your Puck Headlines: a glorious collection of news and views collected from the greatest blogosphere in sports and the few, the proud, the mainstream hockey media.
• Nicklas Backstrom joins hands with teammate Alex Ovechkin in celebration of having well-compensating jobs. [@plysenkov via alexovetjkin]
• Great stuff from professor James Mirtle on the NHLPA offers and how they attempt to approach 50/50. (Note: His post doesn't contain the third offer, which may or may not have been written on a cocktail napkin.) [Globe & Mail]
• Mark Spector drops the hammer on Gary Bettman: "Bettman, however, has reached critical mass as the owners' emissary. It was under him that the pendulum swung so far to the players' side that a year-long lockout was required. And even with a step that drastic, it's taking a third consecutive stoppage to get that pendulum back to 50/50. That's why he looks so tired. Why Bettman couldn't even muster up the stage presence to entertain the NHLPA offer over night before countering." [Sportsnet]
• Frank Seravalli on the lockout: "I can get behind the players' wanting every dollar of signed deals to be honored. Otherwise, owners who signed players to mega-deals this summer would not have been bargaining in good faith, knowing that they would be asking for a reduction in revenue sharing." [Philly.com]
• Shawn Horcoff doesn't believe the owners were negotiating in good faith: "There was no talk whatsoever, not even any communication among their own people in the room, among the owners. It was that quick. It didn't really matter what we had to say. Unless we totally accepted their deal, they weren't going to take it. Right away you could tell they're not serious." [QMI]
• Check out the awesome check from Pat Sieloff in the OHL last night. [Buzzing The Net]
• The AHL is feeling pretty good about the lockout, with attendance up 5 percent. Said President Dave Andrews: "Clearly, we've had far more exposure than we normally have from the main-stream hockey media and, if the quality of your league in enhanced, more people attend the games," said Andrews. "There's about 100 players in our league now who would have been on an NHL roster at the start of the season." [Canada.com]
• Stack.com presents six reasons why USA Hockey will never catch Canada, including "Passion and Pressure": "Canada is expected to win at hockey, no matter whom they play. At the World Junior Championships in Buffalo in 2010, Canadians were lined up for miles to cross the border to watch their country play. During the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, an estimated 80 percent of the Canadian population watched the Gold medal game between Canada and the U.S. In America, the two biggest games in USA hockey history—the 2010 Gold medal game against Canada and the 1980 semi-final game against the Soviet Union—were not even aired live on a major TV network. In 2010, NBC showed ice dancing over hockey." [Stack]
• Ellen Etchingham's feeling the expansion blues: "… if you're in one of those fortunate places where tickets are cheap and plentiful and you can't imagine life without going to NHL games multiple times a week, if you believe that NHL hockey should be brought to more people even if the product is barely worthy of the name, then riddle me this: where does it end? If two more teams is good, would not four more teams be better? If we want to keep the NHL in Phoenix and Nashville and Sunrise and Columbus, and have it also in Markham and Quebec, why not Hamilton and Seattle and Kansas City? Why not Tulsa? Hell, think big my friends, why not Honolulu? Why not just absorb the AHL in its entirety and have NHL hockey everywhere? If talent dilution is not a problem at 30 teams, and not at 32 teams, then when does it become one?" [Backhand Shelf]
• Kudos to the NHL for going purple on Spirit Day. [NHL.com]
• Connor McDavid is pretty good. [Hockey Primetime]
• The KHL is good hockey and bad business, which we believe automatically qualifies them for NHL revenue sharing. [National Post]
• Another good one from Backhand Shelf as 67Sound proposes a "make-whole" salary cap. [BS]
• Craig Conroy will get his number retired by Clarkson University. [Flames]
• Congrats to Scott Niedermayer for getting into the Canada Sports Hall of Fame. Now, name-check Tom Kurvers in the acceptance speech … [NHL.com]
• Finally, we give to you this Montreal hockey brawl, and at one point turns into a crazy pile-on. As opposed to a crazy pylon, which is Dion Phaneuf:
After two days of meetings between the NHL and NHLPA, the two sides have yet to agree to meatier parts of a new CBA and thus the league has gone forward with postponing another chunk of the 2012-13 schedule. As of Friday all games through Nov. 1 have been canceled.
From the NHL:
The National Hockey League announced today the cancellation of the 2012-13 regular-season schedule through November 1. A total of 135 regular-season games were scheduled for Oct. 11 through Nov. 1.
The cancellation was necessary because of the absence of a Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NHL Players' Association and the NHL.
That's an additional 53 games on top of the 82 that were canceled back on Oct. 4.
Remember: Commissioner Gary Bettman said on Monday that if the NHL's proposal is accepted within 10 days, they could fit in the 82-game schedule which would begin on Nov. 2. Of course, after listening to Donald Fehr on Thursday, a Nov. 2 start isn't in the cards, but there's still the potential for a 70ish-game season beginning sometime in November if the posturing and PR battles stop and serious negotiating begins on both sides. The question now is how big is the chunk of games that will go once Bettman's 10-day deadline passes without any progress?
And as the cancellation of games keeps moving forward, we get closer and closer to the Winter Classic getting axed from the NHL's schedule. MLive.com's Ansar Khan reported that Nov. 20 is the drop-dead date to save the game and give the league enough time to prepare both Michigan Stadium and Comerica Park for the events surrounding the Winter Classic.
Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy
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There are provocative videos about the NHL, made by angry fans with a message for both owners and players.
And then there's this video by "eamu99" on YouTube: stunning, jarring minute-long clip in which a son laments the lockout at the bedside of his father, whom he says is fighting terminal cancer:
"I hope that the doctors and nurses that keep my dad alive get a raise. And that you get your asses back on the ice before it's too late." Man …
Here's a bit more from "eamu99":
Just wanna catch a game with my dad. There is a deal for the players within the NHL. But there is a contract with the communities that these players come from as well. When you are mentally strong enough to become an elite athlete you are a special human being (in most cases anyways) . A human being that can lead and inspire the people around them and their communities. The NHL take these extraordinary people and display them so their effect is amplified. Because of this lockout we have displaced inspiration and it is sad. I am sure that whoever misses out on their little piece of inspiration wont be refunded. Seems there is no deal for the fans in the NHL.
The video was put together by Canada native John Dick, 31, who studied journalism at the University of Queensland in Australia. While attending school, his father Bruce was diagnosed with cancer back in Canada.
"My dad wouldn't allow me to come back. He made me finish university," said John Dick.
The last time John saw his father was several years ago; i.e. the last time the NHL locked out its players. He traveled to see him again because Bruce was given just weeks to live.
Knowing that his son was a filmmaker, Bruce suggested they do a project together. "You're not going to be picking up any chicks the way you're looking," quipped John at the time.
The two finally settled on a mutual animosity for the NHL, the NHLPA and the lockout as their subject. John played hockey growing up and remains a fan; Bruce was an Edmonton Oilers dynasty fan that continued to follow the game.
John's premise was simple: Delivering a gut-punch of a message, underscored by his father's condition.
"How many tickets have me and my dad bought? How many times have we seen [the NHL]?" he asked. "You don't play hockey for other hockey players. You don't play for the owners. You play for the fans."
John said he hopes the NHL's top brass, including Gary Bettman, sees the video. And that maybe, just maybe, it has an impact on their desire to lock out the players.
As for his father, John said he's spending as much time as he can with him. Instead of the NHL, they'll watch CFL football games in the hospital.
Admittedly, it's difficult to hear his father talk about watching the NHL upon conclusion of the football game, knowing that the League won't be playing any time soon.
"He forgets. He's on a lot of pain killers," said John.
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