NHL 2012-2013: Tentative deal early Sunday January 6

FSeven wrote:

Great letter but sadly it will fall on deaf ears. Bettman makes $8 mil a year and is an employee of the team owners (as is every commissioner of every professional league) and he will do his owners' bidding.

8mil? Barf.

I look at some of these C** compensation packages, and they make me sick. I wish I could get paid what they do and f*ck things up.

So, has anyone been keeping track of negotiations or lack thereof? I get too depressed when I look, so am appropriately curious.

Bah, wake up and my top tweet is from a hockey player talking about lockout being ended. Get excited, read more and find out he's talking about NFL refs. Now I'm fully awake and grumpy; who needs caffeine?

AnimeJ wrote:

So, has anyone been keeping track of negotiations or lack thereof? I get too depressed when I look, so am appropriately curious.

I am. I still don't see what leverage the NHLPA has in the negotiations. Maybe they're making a lot of progress and not talking about it but I don't think there will be much movement until actual games start being missed. The season starting with the outdoor game is still my expectation. When I look at the Habs' roster and the guy they have coaching the team a full season being cancelled wouldn't upset me all that much.

I've also been following the Edmonton arena subsidy negotiations which are very amusing. Relocation threats don't get any emptier when they're made by one of the 6-or-so most profitable teams in the league even though you've also been the worst team in the league under the expired CBA.

Before I'd stopped watching, the NHLPA was already agreeing to give up a huge amount of money; something like a billion dollars over the next 5 years. The problem is that the owners dont' think that they're giving up enough and are demanding another billion on top of that. It was pretty bullsh*t.

The parties are meeting tomorrow for their first true negotiating session since the lockout began.

There's talk that they have committed to three straight days of negotiation. So there's that.

The only leverage the NHLPA has at the moment is that if negotiations don't progress in a very positive direction this weekend, a lot of players will start heading overseas to play beginning next week.

I've discovered Grand-Am and ALMS racing. Their seasons are ending soon, but all their races are archived online, in full, for free. So that should tide me over until they start again in the new year.

Hope you can work out sharing your billions of dollars, you f*cking babies. Just kidding! I hope you choke on it.

Sorry but this video is no longer available.

Gravey wrote:

I've discovered Grand-Am and ALMS racing. Their seasons are ending soon, but all their races are archived online, in full, for free. So that should tide me over until they start again in the new year.

Hope you can work out sharing your billions of dollars, you f*cking babies. Just kidding! I hope you choke on it.

Your words, they speak to me. I'm still blaming the owners on this one though; the PA's offer was more than fair.

I think I'll blame the owners over Bettman. He does what they tell him to. The dumbest owners in pro sports, next to the Wilpons, are the NHL owners.

This lockout is strange. The previous one made sense. There was huge disparity. Teams and the league were losing a tonne of money. The game was stagnant. Lots of problems. This time...not so much. It just feels greedy. I sympathize with the players but really, I don't care. I just want them to start playing.

I think Bettman should be fired. I actually don't mind him so much as others but having three lockouts in one tenure leads me to believe that he is unable to properly negotiate.

f*ck the old owners. f*ck Jacobs. f*ck Snyder. And f*ck the other guys who listen to them. These are greedy selfish old men.

Just out of curiosity, have folks seen the more recent deals on the table? I've seen em elsewhere and was curious. For those who may not have, here's my understanding:

Owners want percentages reversed, with the players taking the shaft.

Players want to protect what they made last season at a minimum, gradually shifting revenue. What's crazy about this is that they're giving, on average 200 mil a year to the owners, assuming current growth rates. On top of that, anything beyond their cut(last years revenues plus a lowering percentage of increase, starting at their current percentage and tapering by a point or so) goes straight into the owners pockets. So in addition to the billion or so they're leaving on the table, owners can plus up that by a not-insignificant amount, provided they're actively engaged in growing the sport and increasing revenues.

From what I understand, the numbers being thrown around don't take into account costs. That's just straight up revenues, before any costs have been deducted. So while the numbers are still pretty ridiculous compared to what an average person makes in a year, the numbers don't actually represent profit.

I think both sides are being idiots. The players for thinking the league is going to settle for anything less than a 50/50 split, and the owners for being such colossal idiots when it comes to offering contracts, and staying in cities where the market for hockey just isn't viable. Cough, Pheonix, Cough!

NHL Lockout for dummies.

On a side note, I've also heard suggestions that hockey fans should send Bettman hats for his lockout hat trick.

Gaald wrote:

From what I understand, the numbers being thrown around don't take into account costs. That's just straight up revenues, before any costs have been deducted. So while the numbers are still pretty ridiculous compared to what an average person makes in a year, the numbers don't actually represent profit.

I think both sides are being idiots. The players for thinking the league is going to settle for anything less than a 50/50 split, and the owners for being such colossal idiots when it comes to offering contracts, and staying in cities where the market for hockey just isn't viable. Cough, Pheonix, Cough!

Yep. But the revenues are in the billions of dollars; the number I heard that the players were getting was something on the order of 1.8 billion dollars in *revenue*.

Also, while the players offer is really crazy sounding, over time as revenue increases, the players will be taking at/lower than 50% of total revenues.

edit - OK, found it. This is a really solid look at one of the more recent deals that I was trying(and floundering at) to explain.

Mr.Green wrote:

Sorry but this video is no longer available. :(

Here you go!

karmajay wrote:
Mr.Green wrote:

Sorry but this video is no longer available. :(

Here you go!

Awesome!

Can we get the OP title changed to in the dumper? So disappointing...

$100 million lost due to canceled pre-season games and "no progress" in talks. So long, '12-'13 season.

Coca-Cola really picked the wrong fall to plaster their Coke Zero bottles with hockey imagery. I mean, whoda thought, back when they must've been planning this campaign, but still.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

$100 million lost due to canceled pre-season games and "no progress" in talks. So long, '12-'13 season.

Speaking of cancelled stuff, the first 82 games were canned. Dammit.

Hey, college hockey starts this weekend (technically, it started last weekend but it was only like three games and they were all Eastern teams, nobody cares about them).

Both the NBC Sports and the CBS Sports channels will usually have games. NESN has a lot of games with those Eastern teams that nobody cares about. Big Ten Network will occasionally have games. If you can somehow get Fox Sports North, you can watch almost every game of the eventual national champion Minnesota Golden Gophers.

I think the longer this goes the higher chance some Euro and especially Russian players just say f*ck it to the NHL model.

Ovechkin has already hinted at it and I don't think hes joking, hes that nuts. Probably not now because of the legal implications of his current contract but he might do a Jagr like stint in the KHL at the tail end of his career. These guys can live like kings in Russia and in allot of cases its not like they are taking a huge pay cut.

NHL's biggest leverage is they think they are the only employer. Imagine an NHL where a higher % of the talent just stops coming over.

In closing. Gary Bettman is a f*cking moron.

n closing. Gary Bettman is a f*cking moron.

Not just him, but the owners, the Fehr brothers and the players. They are all culpable, and equally as stupid.

Gaald wrote:
n closing. Gary Bettman is a f*cking moron.

Not just him, but the owners, the Fehr brothers and the players. They are all culpable, and equally as stupid.

no. Sure the players could just bend over and take it but theres a line of decency.

and when I say Bettman the owners are implied. Sad part is I honestly would rate some of owners as so out of touch they are not even in the thinking process. They probably just differ to Bettman.

I also think theres a tipping point when it comes to the KHL. The amount of money floating around Russia is just ridiculous especially when you look at the type of money that they throw around in their soccer leagues. You would have to assume one of the sticking points for players about the KHL is the level of competition. They steal enough players to raise the level of play in the KHL and it could be a pretty noticeable drop off of guys who are willing to come over.

jowner wrote:
Gaald wrote:
n closing. Gary Bettman is a f*cking moron.

Not just him, but the owners, the Fehr brothers and the players. They are all culpable, and equally as stupid.

no. Sure the players could just bend over and take it but theres a line of decency.

McKenzie had an interesting point about how the offers from the players don't actually sacrifice what is being advertised. I'm very tired and would have to dig it up but his point was the percentages and numbers being stated by Fehr and others, while accurate, don't equal to a very substantial proposal. It's far more than the owners (from what I've read it's only about 8 owners) have put on the table but the players are not clean in this. As Gaald said, everyone sucks in this.

I don't think the KHL will be a real threat for a long time. The amount of Russian players in the NHL is lower than it's been in the past 20 years. North American players won't live there for very long (the plane crash will always be in the back of their minds). Swedes and Finns can return home to very comfortable lifestyles and permanent jobs working for their hockey clubs. The worst that will come of it will be the loss of European and Russian players. I hate that thought (especially since some of the best forwards are European) but I can see the NHL being willing to sacrifice them.

I don't see the KHL as a viable alternative league but a legitimate threat to high end talent.

To just name four very high quality players currently in the Nhl. Datsyuk, Kovalchuk, Malkin, Ovechkin.

It's really not a stretch to say 10 years from now whoever is the next generation of Russian stars that are those equivalents some or all won't be in the NHL.

It might honestly happen quickly also. Yakupov comes up in the 2015 season. It takes one crazy KHL owner to take a run at him with a contract that is insane by NHL standards and pocket change by the owners standards.

Just some food for thought. Pavelski is playing in the KHL. The KHL are trying to add a Swedish, Finnish and a team in Milan. Just losing Russian talent would be a blow so let's not think about them being able to appeal to Swedes Finnish players and teams in western Europe.

Good luck to the NHL in a future situation where they can't even concentrate all the top talent in their own league like the NBA, MLB, and NFL.