Game off
It shouldn't be this way. I keep compulsively checking the headlines to see if the story that the NHL canceled its season today was somehow a major and cruel hoax. But it's not.
The reality of it is, there's no NHL this season, and already next season isn't looking terribly promising. And while this affects my day-to-day existence minimally, no longer living in an NHL city and not having cable TV, it saddens me all the same.
No box scores to check nightly. No scouring for stories about my beloved Kings. No anticipation of the NHL playoffs, the greatest tournament in all sport and the embodiment of why hockey blows every other sport out of the water. No veteran pushing 40 hoisting Lord Stanley's Cup for the first time. No power plays and penalty kills. No five minutes for fighting. No one-timers, glass-shattering hip checks or contortionist saves. No Zamboni.
Much of the post-mortem has focused on assigning guilt, and there's plenty to go around.
It's hard not to point the finger at a collection of millionaires unwilling to sacrifice a few million that, in the grand scheme of a $2 billion industry, amount to very little. It's hard to feel very sympathetic toward a few hundred grown men who make more to play a game two-thirds of the year than most of us will make in a decade of our professional lives. It's hard to fathom how players turning down the opportunity to live out the fantasies of everyone who ever laced up a pair of skates, donned a stick and imagined stepping onto the ice at the Forum, the Garden, the Joee, the Stadium.
But then it's even harder to feel sympathic for a select group of multimillionaires who refused to sleep in the bed they made. The owners decided to expand wildly, rapidly and perhaps unwisely into too many untested markets. It's not that the NHL could never support 30 healthy teams, or that hockey can never survive in such non-traditional Sun Belt markets as Atlanta, Nashville and Raleigh, just that it couldn't do it so quickly. But the owners cared less about long-term viability than they did about short term expansion fees and other quick windfalls.
Furthermore, no one ever put a gun to an owner's head to sign off on a contract. Many players are grossly overpaid (paging the New York Rangers), but it's difficult to fault a player for taking the bloated contract if some owner is offering. The owners lacked the restraint to keep salaries at a reasonable level, so they have to look squarely in the mirror to figure out who created the financial mess the league is in. In that light, it's difficult to pity the owners for asking to be saved from themselves.
All of this underscores how asinine it was that the two sides couldn't get a deal worked out. Blame it in large part for having no sense of urgency, no apparent concern that huge chunks of games were being lost and time was running out to salvage the season.
To their credit, both sides seemed to get inspired at the 11th hour, though it proved too little, too late.
But what really gets me is what ultimately cost us the season. $6.5 million. The difference between the league's salary cap number of $42.5 million and the union's counterproposal of $49 million. This is relative pocket change, and furthermore, it's a real concern for less than half the teams in the league that actual spend in this ballpark. Never mind that the two sides managed to get on the same page in terms of de-linking salaries with revenues and having a cap at all, or that the players agreed to roll back all current salaries by 24 percent. The two sides started compromising only to have a deal fall apart when they couldn't agree on a number of little importance or consequence, especially in the grand scheme of things. The league rejected the union's counterproposal last night and there were no more negotiations. No more offers from either side. It ended with a whimper.
So there's plenty of blame to go around. Unfortunately, dispensing it won't make NHL games magically materialize.
The question becomes: has anyone learned enough to try to save next season?
For the fans, for the blue-collar team employees losing paychecks, for the game, I hope they have. However, the events of the last 24 hours (and five months) give me little reason for hope.
The reality of it is, there's no NHL this season, and already next season isn't looking terribly promising. And while this affects my day-to-day existence minimally, no longer living in an NHL city and not having cable TV, it saddens me all the same.
No box scores to check nightly. No scouring for stories about my beloved Kings. No anticipation of the NHL playoffs, the greatest tournament in all sport and the embodiment of why hockey blows every other sport out of the water. No veteran pushing 40 hoisting Lord Stanley's Cup for the first time. No power plays and penalty kills. No five minutes for fighting. No one-timers, glass-shattering hip checks or contortionist saves. No Zamboni.
Much of the post-mortem has focused on assigning guilt, and there's plenty to go around.
It's hard not to point the finger at a collection of millionaires unwilling to sacrifice a few million that, in the grand scheme of a $2 billion industry, amount to very little. It's hard to feel very sympathetic toward a few hundred grown men who make more to play a game two-thirds of the year than most of us will make in a decade of our professional lives. It's hard to fathom how players turning down the opportunity to live out the fantasies of everyone who ever laced up a pair of skates, donned a stick and imagined stepping onto the ice at the Forum, the Garden, the Joee, the Stadium.
But then it's even harder to feel sympathic for a select group of multimillionaires who refused to sleep in the bed they made. The owners decided to expand wildly, rapidly and perhaps unwisely into too many untested markets. It's not that the NHL could never support 30 healthy teams, or that hockey can never survive in such non-traditional Sun Belt markets as Atlanta, Nashville and Raleigh, just that it couldn't do it so quickly. But the owners cared less about long-term viability than they did about short term expansion fees and other quick windfalls.
Furthermore, no one ever put a gun to an owner's head to sign off on a contract. Many players are grossly overpaid (paging the New York Rangers), but it's difficult to fault a player for taking the bloated contract if some owner is offering. The owners lacked the restraint to keep salaries at a reasonable level, so they have to look squarely in the mirror to figure out who created the financial mess the league is in. In that light, it's difficult to pity the owners for asking to be saved from themselves.
All of this underscores how asinine it was that the two sides couldn't get a deal worked out. Blame it in large part for having no sense of urgency, no apparent concern that huge chunks of games were being lost and time was running out to salvage the season.
To their credit, both sides seemed to get inspired at the 11th hour, though it proved too little, too late.
But what really gets me is what ultimately cost us the season. $6.5 million. The difference between the league's salary cap number of $42.5 million and the union's counterproposal of $49 million. This is relative pocket change, and furthermore, it's a real concern for less than half the teams in the league that actual spend in this ballpark. Never mind that the two sides managed to get on the same page in terms of de-linking salaries with revenues and having a cap at all, or that the players agreed to roll back all current salaries by 24 percent. The two sides started compromising only to have a deal fall apart when they couldn't agree on a number of little importance or consequence, especially in the grand scheme of things. The league rejected the union's counterproposal last night and there were no more negotiations. No more offers from either side. It ended with a whimper.
So there's plenty of blame to go around. Unfortunately, dispensing it won't make NHL games magically materialize.
The question becomes: has anyone learned enough to try to save next season?
For the fans, for the blue-collar team employees losing paychecks, for the game, I hope they have. However, the events of the last 24 hours (and five months) give me little reason for hope.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 00:46
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