The ongoing NHL lockout has just been one huge headache. Honestly, I'm sick of writing about it. Apparently the sides have somewhat continued talks but people (including Dan Cleary) still think this thing will last a while.
So right now there are a plethora of NHLers playing in the various Europe leagues or the AHL (read my in-depth KHL post here).
While at this point, we'd only have seen a handful of preseason games, we've still missed some pretty amazing moments. This post is a reminder of what we're losing.
Many of you are probably in the same situation I'm in. With the NHL season in jeopardy (as it already begins cancelling games) I have a strong urge to watch some good quality hockey. The KHL has already had a solid reputation (aside from Kieth Jones who famously ripped into the league) and I decided to do some research.
Well I found out the hard way, how difficult it was to just pick up a new sport and I'm still having trouble following the new league. The team names mean nothing to me and I'm yearning for a sense of familiarity. So to help my readers get involved into the sport, I've decided to create some shortcuts to get right into the action.
Today seemed like the most important day for NHL CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) negotiations. The last several days or so wasn't exactly filled with constant negotiation or communication, a troubling sign during this time. But let's face it. We all pretty much knew that these talks would REALLY start getting serious a week or two before the NHL's deadline of September 15th. And with that date just 3 days away, the meetings today were pretty much all we could count on.
The main problems involved HRR (Hockey Related Revenue) percentage which both sides were trying to redefine and win over, and, of course, salary cuts. The current CBA was constructed by the owners who won the fight back in 2005 when we lost a season that year. But now that the league has been blossoming, the owners want a bigger cut of the pie (no, Dustin Byfuglien. Not that type of pie.) Things got even more interesting when there were some legal problems with the Labour Laws up in Canada which stated that no Canadian employees can be locked out without representation by a recognized Union. Coincidentally, the NHLPA isn't recognized, making a potential NHL lockout problematic. You can read about it here. The NHLPA stated that the NHL's planned lockout is "illegal in Quebec" and that a hearing is scheduled for 10:30 AM Friday.
The players took some pay cuts in the first couple of proposals in these negotiations but the owners continued to ask for larger pay cuts by the players, something they were unwilling to forfeit. So with that in mind, we went into today just hoping that both sides can find some common ground and make progress.
Well the meeting began at around 12:00 PM. Donald Fehr, head of the NHLPA came to the meeting with players such as Chris Campoli (MTL), Mathieu Darche (MTL), Ron Hainsey (WPG), Manny Malhotra (VAN), George Parros (FLA), Cory Schneider (VAN), Kevin Westgarth (LAK), and Daniel Winnik (ANA).
So the NHLPA with Fehr and his men met with commissioner Gary Bettman and Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly.
When I heard that nearly three hours later, the talks were still going on, I was hopeful that they were at the least making progress. Reports surfaced that the PA made a revised proposal and then the NHL discussed it and then made a counter proposal.
The NHLPA's agreement had them taking a lower percentage than previously discussed. The players didn't want an absolute cut of share of revenue at the start but agreed that they would over time as the revenue grew.
Uh oh. Bettman's response was almost predictable.
Bettman said that their offer was "not much different" then their previous one. The NHL's counter offer was a tad bit more fair then their last one but not by much. They loosened up the amount of cash going to the players (a little bit) and gave them a bigger percentage of HRR (a little bit). Then they said that if no new deal was made by Saturday (doomsday, September 15th) then this proposal was coming off the table.
The main thing from today, though, was that the NHL wanted players to immediately reduce their salaries, something the players were not exactly for (they wanted to gradually lower it over time rather than do it immediately).
The length of the new deal was also an argument as the players were looking for a 3 year deal while the NHL was trying to strike a 6 year deal. However, the players ultimately said they'd go up to a 5 year deal.
Bob McKenzie, TSN analyst was grim about the future, pointing out how far apart both sides are. The NHLPA says it won't take an actual decrease in money spent on salary while the NHL is asking for an immediate and significant reduction. As McKenzie put it, "not even in the same universe."
The NHLPA had a meeting in the afternoon before Donald Fehr's press conference. Seemingly hundreds of hockey players showed up at the hotel including superstars like Zach Parise, Claude Giroux, and almost the entire Boston Bruins team (yes, including Chara).
NHL players at meeting today in NYC
Fehr started off by saying that the league is still asking for a lot of financial givebacks by the players. Fehr said that it seemed that the NHL was going from asking for "an extraordinarily large amount" to just a " really very large amount."
So based on the fact that the NHL is looking for the players to immediately take significant pay cuts and the fact that the players are entirely against that, things aren't looking too promising. Also, as Tom Gulitti pointed out, both sides are negotiating off of their own proposals. They aren't responding to the other party's proposal, but rather working off of their own previous offers, something that's essentially counter-productive.
The teams have realized the depressing outcome also as a large amount of players have been placed on waivers to make them eligible to play in the AHL (more on this later) this season in case of a lockout. We will probably see some familiar names there this year.
First of all, the lack of media attention has been an outrage. I recall last summer watching ESPN (that was my first mistake) and being inundated with coverage of both the NBA and the NFL potential lockouts. The anchors spent upwards of 20 minutes an episode of their flagship show, Sportscenter, discussing the intrecacies of the deals and the possible fall backs of a lockout.
So you can all understand my dismay when they don't even spend a little bit of time on the NHL lockout. I've discussed the inadequacies of the hockey coverage in the past but this has been by far the most saddening. We're talking about an entire league being locked out again for the 3rd time in 17 years yet you wouldn't exactly know this if you spent your time watching subpar sport analysis from the self-proclaimed "World Wide Leader in Sports."
Tom Gulitti tweeted before the meeting that all of the players standing around were causing a large stir on the streets of New York outside of the offices. He said that a lot of people stopped on the street to ask what was going on but when told, they moved on unaffected. He even told a story that a woman got excited because she thought all the hubbub was for the NFL referee’s lockout (which DOES get a lot of coverage on ESPN) and was rather disappointed when told it was for the hockey one.
Back to my post about Bettman's comments, us fans will be back. The fact that you’re reading this means you care enough about hockey that you’ll be back to the NHL as soon as it returns. That’s the way us hockey fans are. But let’s take a trip back to 2005. The NHL was struggling in the world of sports. After the lockout, they tried to revamp the game to make it more exciting in an attempt to lure more fans to the sport. And frankly, that strategy has been fantastic. Although we still can’t keep up with the other major sports in America, the NHL has slowly gained ground on the other leagues. Major sporting markets have built excellent followings for hockey. Cities like Buffalo, Boston, New York, and many others have excelled with the fans. (Note: I’m only talking about American following. Canada is and always will be into the sport.) So what is troubling about this untimely lockout is the lost connections with these newfound fans. Many people fear that these fans will just abandon ship, never to return. I wish I could say that these casual fans will be eager to return but we don’t know for sure. Things don’t look too good right now.
So what about us? What about the diehards who have to endure yet another lockout? What do we do?
Well we have several options.
In the 2005 lockout, I was still a child so I wasn’t able to change over to a different league. So what worked for me was ES Sports NHL 2005. The EA franchise has been consistently releasing fantastic sporting video games and have won awards the last several years for their progress in the industry. This year’s game includes new features such as a complicated Power Skating Program and a new goaltending system. You can read the whole review here on PuckDaddy. The fact is, if you’re itching for some legit NHL action, this is the closest you can get and, trust me, you’ll be satisfied.
If not-real hockey doesn’t do it for you and you still want NHL-like action, you can start to follow the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) in Russia. That league has been growing for several years and many players from the NHL are going to play there if there is a lockout (and perhaps stay there when the NHL returns). Stars like Alex Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, and perhaps Sidney Crosby may go and play there overseas in the event of a cancelled season.
The positives are evident. The level of play and speed of the game are close to that of the NHL's so it'd be like your not missing anything.
The downside, however, are raher large. To begin with, there's an 8 hour difference from New York and Russia meaning that a 7:00 PM game there will begin at 11 in the morning here, a pretty big inconvenience for people. Also, the only way we could watch those games would be on cheap, blurry online internet streams, not the ideal way to watch a hockey game.
But if you want to watch some real, fast-paced action this year, the KHL may be your best choice.
If you don't really want to put up with the struggles of watching KHL hockey this season, this last idea may be for you. The American Hockey League (AHL) has been the development grounds for many of today's NHL stars. There's a great amount of young talent in the league, and as I mentioned earlier, there will be a good amount of young NHLers taking a step down this year to play there also.
The pros here are that the games are here in America and it's easy enough to follow. Some names may be familiar depending on how big of a hockey fan you are and the action is pretty good in the AHL. Additionally, this would be a great way of scouting the young talent for future years in the NHL.
So whatever way you look at this, things don't look too good. It's almost a certainty that we won't have a done deal by the September 15th deadline, an occurrence that the NHL claimed they'd shut down the season for. We can hope that the negotiations go past the deadline and eventually they'll come up with a deal. But until then, we have to just sit here and wait.
As for this blog, I'll find some good things to write about. I'll try to follow the success of some of the NHL players playing in different leagues. I also want to write up some of my favourite games, moments, and other important stories from NHL's history. As Greg Wyshynski and Jeff Marek say a lot on their blog (Marek vs. Wyshynski. You can find it in Itunes), in 2005, hockey survived on the internet. It was blogs like these that helped fans come back to the sport and hopefully I'll be in the fight this time around.
During the frustratingly fruitless labor disputes, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman made a statement which caused some stir amongst the fans of the NHL. "We recovered last time because we have the worlds greatest fans," said the commissioner.
The reaction to this was pretty expected, given the way people view Bettman nowadays. At this point, the fans don't even think twice about going against what he says. And now that we're on the brink of yet another lockout, one that would be the third lockout in 19 years under Bettman, people hate him more than ever.
So when Bettman made that statement regarding the fans, people read it as "If you guys weren't such doormats, I might be worried" meaning that he knows we'll (meaning the fans) come back to the sport we love no matter what happens and there's nothing we can do about it.
Well I'm here to say that he's 100% right.
Sure, he didn't say it in the disrespectful way we took it as but let's think here for a second. If you're a die hard hockey fan who's glued to the television screen for every minute of televised hockey, what are the chances you're going to leave the NHL for, let's say, garbage online streams of KHL hockey or lower level of the AHL? I highly doubt that the real fans of the NHL won't be frustrated enough to make that horrible transition. If there is a lockout and a stoppage of play for any amount of time, it's almost expected that hockey fans will come right back to the NHL when it resumes almost as quickly as the real fans did after the 2005 lockout.
"Thank You Fans" after we all came back after the 2005 lockout
But let's be honest here. Fans are fed up.
But will it really accomplish anything if we start protesting the league? Will the NHL give a crap if we start unfollowing their Twitter page? Will they be concerned if several people start boycotting team sponsors? Will they begin to panic if we sign some online petition that's meant to somehow pressure Bettman and the owners? What about if we gather outside of the NHL store on September 15th in an @OccupyNHLStore movement?
None of these would accomplish anything.
I like the way Puck Daddy's analogy in his post about the matter. In this situation, we're the children in this relationship as our parents are fighting and going through a divorce. It's not our fault, we're not guilty, and, unfortunately, there's nothing we can do to stop it. If we run away from home (turn to a different hockey league) nothing's going to change.
What these attempts to get the league back shows is that we're desperate to get the league back. This proves Bettman's point that this league is too precious to us and we'll almost undoubtedly be back.
So all we can do now is just sit and wait and perhaps shake our heads until both stubborn sides agree on something. It's depressing but that's all we can do.
But I'm not going to lie. This video that protests the lockout is pure brilliance and is definitely worth a watch.
