Hope for hockey?
 

I doubt it. Freakin' abusive owners:
URL:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...t.ap/index.html

Text:
Players agree to cap
Despite concession, season-saving talks break down
Posted: Tuesday February 15, 2005 10:14AM; Updated: Tuesday February 15, 2005 10:14AM

NEW YORK (AP) -- The NHL players' association agreed to accept a salary cap, but contract talks broke down early Tuesday over the amount that teams would pay.

Even while the negotiations were going on, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman had already planned to announce the cancellation of the season Wednesday, a source close to the negotiations told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Monday.
Bettman was slated to speak Wednesday in New York, but the NHL declined to give details beyond the time and location.

The NHL offered to remove its demand for a link between league revenues and player costs, a "significant move in the players' direction" the union said in a statement early Tuesday following a meeting in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

But when the players offered to accept a cap at $52 million _ the first time they came off their opposition to a ceiling on salaries -- the offer was rejected by the NHL. The league insisted on a salary cap that topped out at $40 million per team.

"It is indeed unfortunate that with the major steps taken by both sides we were unable to build enough momentum to reach an agreement," players' association senior director Ted Saskin said in a statement early Tuesday.
No new talks were immediately scheduled, but with the philosophical differences now bridged there appeared to be room for the sides to negotiate dollar figures.

The 24-percent rollback on all existing contracts, originally offered by the union on Dec. 9, as well as more aggressive luxury tax rates and thresholds, were included in the players' counteroffer.

With the major stumbling blocks now out of the way, the sides are only $12 million apart on what each team's cap should be. With the salary rollback, only eight of the 30 teams would be above $40 million.

Until now, Bettman insisted that the 30 teams know what their costs will be each season. The only way, he said, that could be achieved was to tie to the amount of player costs to a percentage of league revenues.

That was a solution the players' association refused.

NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly was the only other person involved in the meeting that wrapped up early Tuesday. The NHL reported that no progress was made, but didn't reveal any details of what was discussed.

If a deal is not reached quickly, the NHL would become the first major professional league in North America to lose an entire season because of a labor dispute. The Stanley Cup has been awarded every year since 1919, when a flu epidemic canceled the finals.

But more than two-thirds of the season and the All-Star game already have been lost to a lockout that started Sept. 16.

Bettman said the sides needed to start putting a deal on paper by last weekend if the NHL was going to hold a 28-game season and a full 16-team playoff. The regular season normally is 82 games.

Even a session with a federal mediator Sunday in Washington couldn't produce an agreement. But it did lead to the breakthrough in talks Monday.

Bettman had said teams needed to have cost certainty to survive and the only way he could guarantee that was with a salary cap that linked league revenues to player costs. Now that position has changed for the first time since the NHL started gearing up for the lockout in 1998.

The league has said teams lost $273 million in 2002-03 and $224 million last season, and an economic study commissioned by the NHL found that players get 75 percent of league revenues. The union has challenged those figures.

A cap had been an automatic deal-breaker for the union even though it agreed that the financial landscape was flawed. The players' association contended that there are many other ways to fix it.

"There is no question the system has to change," said New Jersey Devils president Lou Lamoriello, who took part in earlier negotiating sessions. "We just have to keep working to find a solution. It's unfortunate we have to come this.

"If the season does end, we can't stop. We have to continue working at this and get it rectified as soon as we possibly can."

Monday, the 152nd day of the lockout, was to have been the last day of the All-Star break; the festivities in Atlanta were called off months earlier. Through Monday, 824 of the 1,230 regular-season games have been lost.

"Everybody has to take responsibility," Lamoriello said.

The sides have traded proposals throughout the lockout, but the salary cap had always been the sticking point. Other issues such as arbitration, revenue-sharing, and rookie caps never reached the true negotiating stage because the sides couldn't agree on the big issue.

In recent days, the union and league seemed adamant that they wouldn't budge.

"We're done," Saskin said Thursday after talks broke off.

On Sunday, Daly said: "We will not be reaching out to them."

gekkogecko,

While I don't follow the NHL closely, yes this is most regrettable. :(

Don't go blaming the owners, it is also the fault of the players. They were getting paid to much as it was and kept wanting more. Hockey isn't as popular as the other sports are and could not support paying them so much.

But it wasn't the players that refused to play, it was the owners that locked them out. The season could have easily gone on while negotiations continued. But with complete disregard for the fans, Bettman ordered the lockout. Bettman is not, and never has been a hockey man, and has done more harm to the league than good. His insistence on "growing" the league by putting teams in places where there is no fan base is at the very least part of the cause of many small market teams losing money.

Is there a way to get this to apply to other sports? :confused:

Close to an agreement
 

As of the 6pm Sportscenter, there is a good chance a deal will get done by 11pm this evening.They are talking about a 30 -35 game shortened season and FULL playoffs. Hopefully they'll play this year!!

Well, the 1100 deadline has come and gone. Fucking comissioner & owners won't budge an inch.

Sorry, Nice Guy, but blaming the players is a bunch of bullshit.

First the owners cook up the books, make it look like they're loosing money that they aren't, in any way, shape or form. Demand a slary cap, and when the players say no, they kept coming back with that idea in any of several guises.

Then they lock the players out, forcing the cancellation of most of the season, and fuck with both the players and fans.

Finally, the players agree to a salary cap, but then the league sets the cap at a crapola level that they know the players won't accept. The league says $42 mil, the players say $52 mil, the league says "no", then the players say $49 mil, and the owners association claims that's going to up their costs by $75 million. To quote Bob Goodenow:

"Clubs are spending significantly less than your team payroll limit number of $42.5 million," Goodenow said in his second letter. "I am at a loss to understand how you suggest your offer earlier today represents a $75 million dollar increase when it only impacts the spending of nine teams!"

IOW, it's the same old shit from the owners.

What the owners want is to destroy the league, and reform it without a players union. This should be obvious by now, even to those who don't want to delve further into the issue.

Fuckheads.

Oh, bTW, I have not yet begun to rant!

Gentlefolk,

I just read that the NHL commissioner just cancelled the 2004-05 season.

"I have no choice but to cancel the 2004-05 season - this is a sad, regrettable day that all of us wish could have been avoided."

:(

GUTTED!!!!!!!! I love watching the NHL.

just bring on the baseball season

GO O'S


Well, I have to say Gekko that I agree with you 100% In the real world the owners would be tried in a court of law for fraud. Anyway, fuck 'em!!
In spite of the steroid scandal , I am still a huge baseball fan and spring training is underway!!



GO O'S
BTW Canseco is a blatant liar and can kiss my fuckin' ass!

I have already stopped going to games because they are already overpaid and they still want more. They should have had a CAP years ago.

What a lying sack of s**t Gary Bettman is!! Or should that be "Buttman"?
He finally gets the players to give in on the salary cap and it's still not good enough. He wanted this situation, hoping that fans would blame the players, so that the NHL can break the NHL Players Association. This is just old fashioned union busting.

ALL sports players are paid way more than they should be. This is not unique to hockey. Hockey doesn't have the huge fan base of football or baseball to begin with, and now to cancel an entire season and alienate what fans they do have is just plain STUPIDITY!!!!

I know I'm ranting, but I can't help it. This just makes me so angry......because it's so unnecessary. Haven't they heard of playing or working under the old contract while negotiating a new one? There was no need to lock the players out and then make it impossible to reach an agreement so that there's not enough time to play even a partial season.

:cents: No player in any league is worth more than a quarter of a million(250,000) dollars. All pro sports should be canceled. JMHO

here's the deal....die-hard hockey fan here....

don't miss it, don't care about, glad this crap is finally over....

too many teams in cities where there isn't enough support, no proper US TV deal because quite frankly, there are not as many NHL fans in the USA as there are for other sports...

a basketball guy running the hockey league like a basketball guy - I"m not saying the players are exempt from blame but Betteman is a total idiot. he couldn't see a negotiation if it smacked him in the head like broad street bullies punch....

sadly, I live in a city which will embrace the NHL when it comes back but that doesn't make it right...

goodnight NHL, sweet dreams.