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Owners Setting The Table For Prolonged
Battle With Players
September 22, 2003
Courtesy of The
Fan View
Story by: Michael Hobson
The NHL recently released a report stating
that collectively the clubs lost approximately
$300 million last season, and declared that
most of the losses were attributed to high
player salaries. This is just the first
in what will likely be a wave of reports
highlighting the financial precipice the
league is approaching due to its overpaid
athletes. However, nowhere in the report
does it mention that the owners must bear
the responsibility for these high salaries,
and must take the entire blame for the previously
negotiated agreement that has completely
blown up in their collective faces.
When the owners and the players last went
to battle it cost hockey fans nearly half
a season. The end result was that players
could not be complete free agents until
they turned 31 years of age. Until that
time their former teams could match any
offer. This was supposed to be a huge advantage
for the owners, but as usual sports owners
found a way to use and abuse a system set
up for their benefit. Players such as Joe
Sakic and Sergei Federov were offered contracts
heavily laden with front loaded bonuses
designed to discourage their present teams
from matching the offers. All it did was
force Colorado and Detroit to pony up the
excessive cash to ensure that each city
kept its Cup contending team intact. Following
behind those contracts came mega buck deals
for such players as Paul Kariya, Peter Forsberg,
and Rob Blake. Star players continued to
sign multi-million dollar deals driving
up the average salary as well as the annual
salaries of all players. The owners, in
effect, screwed themselves…again.
It doesn't matter how hard the league
bargains this time, or how long they keep
the arenas closed, somehow someway the owners
will find a way to abuse the system. The
players will manipulate the owners into
paying out larger contracts and every advantage
the owners bargained for will go up in smoke.
Then the league and the owners will once
again blame the greedy players for putting
the game in peril. Greedy, competitive owners
will look for any loophole in the system
to gain an upper hand on a fellow owner.
Detroit will find a way to sign a star player
away from Colorado, and St. Louis will steal
an expensive superstar away from Philadelphia.
Leaf ownership will naturally stand on the
sidelines, bemoan the fate of the league,
and continue to deposit millions into their
individual accounts. And teams like Anaheim
and Calgary and Edmonton will find it that
much harder to compete.
The likely scenario is that within a few
years some of the smaller market clubs will
be unable to compete and, unable to find
another market (U.S. based of course) will
have no other choice but to simply fold
up shop. The league will slowly recoil back
to a more manageable size, such as 24 teams.
Superstar players will continue to be paid
in the mega-millions, the average annual
salary will continue to rise, and the competitive
balance of the league will stay as it always
has-with the teams that have the money and
spend it well competing for the Cup.
And once again those that suffer from
all the shenanigans, from all the bluster
and blather, and from all the bargaining
that will end up solving nothing, will be
the fans. They will likely not only be without
their sport for a lengthy period of time
but will have to pay for all the errors
made by both sides. But then surely the
fans are used to being taken for granted
by the players and owners of major league
sports. Right?
Reprinted courtesy of www.thefanview.com
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