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Posted on 01/21/2005 9:15:05 PM PST by Hat-Trick
Linden: Little hope for season
By Mark Brender
January 21, 2005
NHL Players’ Association president Trevor Linden is telling players to be prepared for the lockout to continue deep into next season, The Hockey News has learned.
In an audio message posted on the NHLPA’s internal website last night, Linden said he sees no basis for further meetings with the league. The league is insisting the only solution to the lockout is with a hard individual team salary cap and is not prepared to compromise in any way, Linden said.
According to multiple sources, Linden told players the NHL refuses to discuss any payroll tax system at any level and is also opposed to real revenue sharing.
"Nothing new, nothing’s changed," one player said after hearing Linden’s message. "It was just made crystal clear, I guess."
"It’s done, it’s over is basically what Trevor was saying," said another source.
One consequence of the league’s hard-line stance, Linden said, would be that young up-and-coming teams such as Tampa Bay and San Jose wouldn’t be able to stay together. He warned the players that any future offer from the league that included a hard cap would be strictly a public relations move and would be rejected by the union executive.
Furthermore, Linden said he was insulted when told during the talks that players would have no more say in how the NHL is run than auto workers have say over how an auto company is run.
NHL chief legal counsel Bill Daly expressed disappointment over Linden’s reaction.
"It is unfortunate if that's all that Trevor took from our two days of meetings,” Daly said. “ We certainly viewed them as far more constructive. I don't intend to say anything more, as I don't believe the time is right to ratchet up the rhetoric. It simply does nothing to move the process forward."
Linden, NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin and outside counsel John McCambridge met with Daly and outside counsel Bob Batterman for roughly 9 1/2 hours over two days of meetings that wrapped up late Thursday afternoon. Calgary owner and NHL board of governors chairman Harley Hotchkiss took part in the first day of talks.
According to sources, Linden said the first day of meetings went well, but the second day was a step backward. Batterman is said to have told Linden that the league would use a dispersal system to shift players from high-payroll teams to low-payroll clubs in order to get all teams between the salary floor and ceiling range.
IMNSHO, the sooner the next league forms and the NHL folds, the better, and it had better be with ANYONE besides Buttman as the commissioner. I'm going along with the dead guy in Canada - make 99 the next commissioner.
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Fall back to six teams!
This is so patently stupid, that if true, had to come from Bettman. Imagine the NHL with this kind of crap in the contracts:
Dear Mr. Sakic: (or insert your favorite player here)
This letter is to notify you that due to salary cap requirements in accordance with the new Collective Barganing Agreement, the NHL is reassigning you to the Atlanta Thrashers. Please report to the Thrashers General Manager and be ready play immediately following the All-Star weekend.
Please give my regards to Pierre and Mr. Kronke.
Love and Kisses,
Gary Bettman, Commissioner
Any legal reason the NHL can't be dissolved and a new league formed with NHL players?
What's the "NHL?" Is there some sort of sport called "hockey" popular somewhere? ;-)
"IMNSHO, the sooner the next league forms and the NHL folds, the better,..."
In the meantime, I'll just keep watching those same 1994 Stanley Cup games on MSG classics. I've seen them so many times now, I've almost convinced myself the Rangers don't suck.
You mean unionists?
That's what I wanted to know...
I'm unsure of what there might be in the player's contracts that would preclude this from happening. Given the number of NHL'ers that are playing in Europe now, it's probably more a matter of finding new owners and buildings to play in.
Bettman sucks. He sucked when he got here from the NBA, and nothing has changed since.
Well, to hell with both of them. I tend to side a bit more with the owners, although some of them have caused the financial problems the league is now undergoing. My problem is simply this... the players are arguing that the owners are "hiding" money and that they aren't in the financial shape they are claiming. They want the owners to open the books. I think that is a reasonable request, however, we all know that the players will not believe anything the owners show them, so there is really no solution in this instance. The players are extremely lucky. I've played hockey for many years and I would LOVE to get paid to play. They need to realize that they have been blessed with talent and they should be happy getting a salary that is tied to league revenues. Both Goodenow and Bettman need to go.... they never have taken the fans interests into consideration. I'm not sure I want to see a new league, but something needs to give.
The season starts at playoff time. There's still time.
I just realized that I haven't heard any of the really annoying local minor league hockey ads.
Indeed, I am replaying the run of Cups the Wings put together. A particular favorite of my son's and I happens to be the thrashing the Nordilanche and Roy received from the Wings in the 2001 Western Conference Finals, 7-0.
I hate to say it...but the NHL died by the early 90s. There is a combination of things to cause this...overhype by the media, salary increases beyond the capability of most teams, stupid owners, and a financially irresponsible league office. If you have six teams that are basically bankrupt...you either take away the franchise or cut the six teams.
The rest of this season is wrapped up and gone. Forget about it. As for the next season...don't count on it. Most of the players are now looking at lesser paying European option or going back home to do real manual labor. The big guys who were drawing $$$$...they are sitting there and spending left and right...their pocket will be empty in two years. My guess is that a new league will appear by 2006...and will limit itself to the eastern coast area...and limit salaries to players to $100k per year and play a 40 game season, with a 16 game championship series. The NHL will dissolve slowly away. Baseball should take a hint of what happened...fans are tired of their act as well.
Right you are. And no playing summertime hockey in warm weather climes. That's just wrong.
1. Expansion to small U.S. markets that could barely support any major professional sports franchise, let alone one in a sport that generates miserable television ratings (Columbus and Nashville, for example).
2. Expansion and/or movement of teams from Canadian and northern U.S. cities to warm-weather markets where nobody even knew what the heck a frozen playing surface was (Winnipeg to Phoenix, Minnesota to Dallas, and Hartford to North Carolina).
3. That stupid flaming red puck on FOX and/or ABC hockey telecasts.
4. Hiring Gary Bettman as commissioner.
In fact, if you had approached me in the early 1990s and asked me to draw up a plan to drive in the NHL to the point of collapse, I couldn't have come up with a better plan than what the NHL has been doing for the last 10-15 years.
But yes, I would like to see Bettman replaced with a non-lawyer who knows the game. He can be an arrogant twerp, and some of the people he has brought to the NHL offices in his wake can be the same way. They all need to be purged.
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