Normally this would be horrible PR for the owner side
January 7 2005, 11:47 AM
...but seeing how they 90% of the fans are on their side,owners probably think "since the fans are blaming the players anyway for this mess, let's just let the season die quietly & use replacement players next season.I'm sure the suckers....I mean fans would be glad to watch the scabs.....I mean players who really love the sport.....take the ice & they'll work cheap too!"
Fuck you Bettman.
7/11/01-1/23/03.
"This is America! And in America, if something sucks, you're supposed to be able to get your money back."-Stan Marsh
There is no Hockey God. I am proof.
I'm the Weeping Willow,and I approve of this post.
I don't think 90% of fans are with the owners at all, especially with the Players last offer, and essentially the non response offer back from the league.
"Let's be clear on where the responsibility lies for where we find ourselves today: it lies exclusively at the feet of union leadership who, despite numerous and repeated approaches by the league over many years, utterly ignored - and, in some cases, knowingly exacerbated - the financial distress the league was experiencing," Bill Daly, the NHL's executive vice-president and chief legal officer, told The Canadian Press via e-mail from New York.
eh....let the players rot. They don't deserve what they're getting paid, especially at the expense of the game itself. Hockey just isn't that popular to survive with mega salaries.
yeah I tend to agree "Let the Players Rot". I was listening to local sports talk radio on my way home from work. They were talking about baseball and laughing their heads off about not having to cover hockey at this time. We should all give up Hockey for Lent.
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If you can't play with the big dogs,stay the hell on the porch
To those who say "let the players rot" because they make too much money. I'm just curious. In your job, if your company offered you a raise more than doubling your salary, would you turn it down?
I'm not absolving the players of their part of responsibility, but the problem is with the owners. They can't control their own spending, because their bottom line is to win the Cup, and they will pay for it., even if it causes them to be bankrupt. The owners refuse to acknowledge their own responsibility, and lay it all on the players as being their fault. The owners don't want any form of Revenue Sharing because then they would be supporting other teams financialy, which can lessen their own odds to win the Cup.
Until the owners claim some form of responsibility for their own actions, and attempt to make some concessions to that effect, this lock out is on the league and owners.
"In your job, if your company offered you a raise more than doubling your salary, would you turn it down?"
If they offered everyone in the company a huge raise that would result in the ultimate demise of the corportation.....I would vote for no big raises. I would also love to get paid millions of dollars to play a game. Yep, it's just a game. If hockey goes away, it wouldn't make a difference in the big scheme of things. Not so when it comes to doctors, teachers, therapists, and other professions that provide a service.
"If they offered everyone in the company a huge raise that would result in the ultimate demise of the corportation.....I would vote for no big raises."
Ah, but there's the rub, voting no to an across the board raise is probably not going th be your call. Right now, the closest thing to that is the NHLPA actually turning back their salaries to the tune of 24%. The NHL said essentially no, because they refuse to accept any form of Revenuse Sharing in the deal.
No offense Misto, but I'm suprised that a Mario fan is siding with teh owners since what you are saying is essentially against what Mario himself did. Should he have not accepted the money that Pittsburgh gave him? Should he not have taken stock in the team instead of cash? Should he have just accepted that the team was bankrupt, and walk away from the money owed him?
Like I said, the players are part of the problem, but so are the owners, and right now, the players are the only ones who have made concessions addressing or attempting to correct that problem.
A couple of thoughts. First, I think Daly's comment was not about how salaries came to be as high as they are, but how the parties wound up in the current standstill in negotiations. One point on which the league has been very consistent is its stance that it has been trying to engage the PA in negotiations for several years now and, while the PA was entitled not to commence discussions, their unwillingness to do so has put them in the current crunch. I've seen posters on several different boards read this as a statement concerning salaries, while to me it's abundantly clear that Daly is speaking of the negotiation process. The league has repeatedly and emphatically acknowledged the owners' responsibility for current salary levels, which brings me to my second point.
Just because the owners are responsible for where salaries are now does not mean they should continue to live with it. I am of the view that the system is problematic due primarily to the fact that what one team does necessarily impacts on other teams, in part due to the UFA contracts, but mostly due to RFA contracts and arbitration. And, since under antitrust rules, the owners cannot agree to keep things in check (except through the CBA), there has to be a change in the system. Just because the Rangers or Red Wings want to spend money (and can perhaps do so profitably) does mean they should be able to set salary levels for other teams that can't affort to pay those levels, which is exactly what happens under the current system. And before someone mentions over-expansion, is it really the PA's position that contraction is the right answer? Is it really the PA's mission to argue for a loss of NHL jobs rather than a limit on salaries? Please.
The PA's roll-back offer was nice and all, but it doesn't do anything to fix the system. It just sets back the clock, while again leaving the owners without any means of controlling the actions of other owners that impact their own payroll levels (emphasis here is the action of "Other Owners"). A luxury tax at twenty cents on the dollar is a joke in a thrity team league. I don't know what the right system is, but I'm fairly certain we haven't seen it from either party yet. In my mind, neither side has made a meaningful offer designed to solve the problem.
