Whistle NHL for $lashing!

Whistle NHL for $lashing!

July 15, 2012
by nypost.com
The NHL’s Declaration of War presented to the Players’ Association in the guise of a first proposal on Friday would roll back the salary cap to approximately $52.5 million for 2012-13. The drop of nearly $10 million from last season would represent the lowest number since 2007-08, sources with knowledge of the league’s scheme have told Slap Shots.
This $52.5 million off a “midpoint” of $48.5 million is the result of a calculation based on the ramifications of slashing the players’ share of the gross to 46 percent from the current 57 percent, coupled with the redefinition of Hockey Related Revenue with the express written intent of dramatically reducing the amount in the pool.
It generally was agreed by those participating in Friday’s meeting that the NHL plan would reduce the
players’ share by 22 percent as compared to 2011-12. Slap Shots was told the players’ share of revenues would thus be rolled back to its lowest point since 2002-03.
According to one source, that would represent a greater decrease in the players’ share than resulted after the 2004-05 lockout, in which the league canceled the season in order to achieve the system that allowed revenues to increase by 50 percent while salaries increased by 15 percent, but now must be shredded like the Articles of Confederation.
Beyond that, the Board of Governors flexed its muscles against an adversary — let’s forever lose the term “partner,” shall we? — it massacred seven years ago by delivering a document that would in effect create a 10-year reserve clause for all players upon entering the NHL while abolishing the right to salary arbitration that has been in effect in one form or another since 1969.
The NHL wants to roll the clock back to the 1960s, when its athletes were powerless and utterly without leverage. A proposed five-year Entry Level system followed by five years without the right to salary arbitration before free agency after 10 accrued NHL seasons would leave every player in the league at the mercy of his team for a decade in a hard cap league.
A player would have two options — sign for the team’s price or sit home. For 10 years, a player would have those two options.
Curt Flood would roll over in his grave.
This isn’t “Billionaires vs. Millionaires.” Only a willfully uninformed fool would apply that sloppy shorthand designation to this disgraceful power grab crafted by some of the wealthiest individuals and corporate entities in North America aimed against professional athletes.
There is the demand for five-year term limits on contracts, the elimination of all signing bonuses and a flat salary figure for every year of a contract. No front-loading. No using the long-term mechanism to create cap space and maneuverability. A portion of one-way contracts in the minors charged against the cap.
No way out.
Understand this: If the league gets its 46 percent on HRR recalibrated largely through cost offsets, the players’ share next year will amount to approximately $1.445 billion.
As of today, according to the essential website, capgeek.com, NHL teams have 2012-13 payroll commitments of approximately $1.575 billion (excluding another $56 million in bonuses), with dozens of players yet unsigned.
That means that a minimum of $130 million in guaranteed contracts would somehow have to be shed by 19 teams that are currently over the league’s proposed cap.
Unless the league actually believes that in order to avoid outright chaos, the players would be willing to accept a 22-percent rollback. That sentiment, we’re told, went unspoken on Friday.
The people out there who wish to interpret this as merely a first proposal from which negotiations can now proceed are kidding themselves. Negotiate off what? Should the NHLPA — which sat through three or four previous days of being told why the current agreement doesn’t work for one team after another — counter by proposing elimination of the cap, a payroll tax at $80 million and free agency after three years?
This is not an initial good-faith proposal. This is a shot across the bow of the union and at the players by a war machine that went scorched-earth last time and can pledge to do it again any day commissioner Gary Bettman feels like it.
This is an immediate attempt to measure the willingness of the players to fight, to gauge their unity, to divide and conquer just the way the league succeeded the last time in busting a union undermined by enemies within.
The players have looked into the face of the Board, and they have seen the future. It’s either a trip back to 2004-05 or a trip back to the ’60s.