s/t to KK… This article is a good read, also, I haven’t see a lot lately that gives me any hope… Former Fighting Sioux forward Jonathan Toews is quoted in this article as well.
Stu Hackel, Red Light Blog --- From the players’ perspective, the owners’ stance borders on self-destruction. Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, among the most respected leaders in the game, articulated that on Monday after an informal practice by Chicago players. “We saw what the (owners) did in ’04-05, and who knows if they’re willing to do that again,” Toews said (quoted by Chris Kuc of The Chicago Tribune). “To me, it’s just carelessness. It’s them just trying to show everyone that they’re the owners and they’re the league. They can do whatever they want. If they want to hurt their own game and drive it into the ground, that’s what they’ll do. Even if it comes down to that, it doesn’t matter as long as they get what they want.”When I read articles like this one, I get the feeling that this labor disagreement might have the possibility of going for a very long time and there could be a chance that it might not get it settled next season. I understand why the players don’t want to lose a big chunk of the gains that they have made during the last CBA – I also don’t think that they should have to. This lockout is on the owners – the players wanted to keep playing – the owners locked them out. Now the fans are hostage of the owners and the NHL players.
Precisely what they want is now fairly well-known: They want to pay the players quite a bit less than they did under the previous agreement. Ownership’s contention is that the economics of the game don’t work, even after they overhauled them in the recently expired CBA by locking out the players for a season to achieve a salary cap system that was designed to fix things. If that tactic worked once for them, the owners are prepared to do it again.
But when that system also brings about record revenues and the healthiest state the NHL has ever been in, it’s worth asking if the economics are as bad as the owners claim. “I know it’s tough to muster sympathy for multimillionaires,” Siegel writes, “but when most of these owners say they’re losing money every year, they’re telling the truth.”
As Siegel points out, Forbes magazine listed 18 NHL clubs that lost money last season in their 2012 team valuations while simultaneously pointing out that the game’s economics have never been more favorable to the owners. (As a caveat, the NHL has always said the Forbes numbers are not accurate; but they remain the best information we have and constitute legitimate estimated and educated guesses.)
