Twitter rant: Barch goes off on owners

Mike Halford

Sep 29, 2012, 11:59 PM EDT

37 Comments

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New Jersey Devils tough guy Krys Barch raised some eyebrows Saturday night with a lengthy, emotional Twitter rant that took aim at NHL owners.

The 32-year-old winger posted a series of lockout-related tweets that began at approximately 10:30 p.m. ET and went on for over an hour.

Barch’s message, in full (everything sic’d):

I sit here from Gand Bend, Ontario putting a pen to my heart and writing on paper what bleeds out. My name is Krys Barch. I have played approx. 5 ½ years in the NHL and have worked for every second of it. I Haven’t been a 1^st round pick, bonus baby or a son of a hall of famer. I have made it through sweating, bleeding, cut Achilles, broken hands, concussions, broken orbital bones, 8 teeth knocked out, etc, etc, etc.

I sit in front of a fire, 8 OV deep and starting a bottle of Porte that will assist in the translations of my emotions into words! No different than a truck driver, farmer or line worker I have a shot and a beer. Not to deal with the days ahead but to ease the nerves from what my body has endured the days before.

I sit here with both my boys sleeping and my wife due with our 3^rd. My thoughts racing on what I can conquer tomorrow to get our family ahead. Some times wonder if I should have existed when a word and a gun solidified and solved all problems. I feel the Wild West would more simplified than the world we live in now whet an employer who makes billions of dollars and a league with record revenues can tell me that I can’t do the things that my heart tells my me to do!

All what my heart tells me to do far surpasses what my body has endured. As I write this I dive deeper and deeper into my bottle of Porte giving wider views to the depths of my heart. As my pen warms from the fire, Neil Young and a fall Canadian night, I wonder how this work stoppage effects the owners?

I wonder if the owners of Boston, New York, Washington etc, etc, have endured any of the injuries that I or any other player in the NHL have endured. Still they probably sit there smoking the same brand of cigar, sipping the same cognac, and going on vacation to one of the five houses they own…While we sit here knowing they want to take 20% of our paychecks.

One half to 3/4 of my peers will have to work for the next 50 years of their lives. Congratulations to the lucky select few that I have played with who have made salaries that they can choose to do whatever they want when they are done. But I have played most who do not!

If the NHL wants to teams in the south or struggling markets than the players along with the financially well to do teams need to start working together. Or they need to start to move the teams to the North where they will make money. The system allows the owners to continually take money from the players contract after contract where eventually over 40 some years the owners will have 80% of revenue. The only way to stop the work stoppages long into the future is fix the root cause of the problems.

The lockout is a procedure to take from the players to pay for the NHL mistakes. Let not allow the NHL to make any mor mistakes. Let the league and the players to come together to fix the mistakes that have been made and make sure non are made in the future. Lets get a deal where the owners, players, and fans benefit from. We’re we can be sitting around in beautiful Canadian fall’s around a fire playing and watching the game we love. Here’s to the truth and our next conversation. As always speaking from my heart! Goodnight! Like me or hate me I speak what comes from my heart!

Barch then logged off Twitter and placed a frantic call to Rod Tidwell.

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37 Comments (Feed for Comments)

aklolzer - Sep 30, 2012 at 12:42 AM

Love it! The players love the game and wear it in their shoulders, it shows during the Olympics when they don’t get paid a single cent, and during the NHL season where they block 100+mph shots, struggle through injuries, and will give every last ounce of energy to help their teammates try to win a single game. The owners are attempting to cut their pay and backtrack on goodwill, faithful contracts. As a fan, I’m with the players and while unhappy there is no hockey, I hope the players dig in deep and get everything they deserve. Here’s to hockey hopefully soon!
sportsfreak13 - Sep 30, 2012 at 12:44 AM

I find myself siding with barch here. Just saying.
manchestermiracle - Sep 30, 2012 at 12:58 AM

Let’s hear an owner, any owner, give as heartfelt a response defending their position. That might be just about impossible, since a single-minded, cold-hearted love of money could never stand a chance against the heat of a player’s passion for the game. Thanks, Barch, for putting this fiasco in its proper perspective.
- somekat - Sep 30, 2012 at 9:46 AM
  
  lol, heartfelt response? Looked like a drunk rant to me
  
  First it’s “the owners would eventually get 80%!”, then it’s “we have to fix the root cause”! Hey genius, it’s the same thing. Only die hard union slobs negotiate a contract that is terrible for owners, then say “why should we pay for their mistakes?” So since they gave you too much before, they should NEVER fix it? yeah, makes sense
  
  No owner will give a “heartfelt” response like this for 2 reasons. 1, they know this is a legal issue, and our opinions don’t matter at all. So why spend time and effort trying to win a PR battle that doesn’t matter? 2, they are smart enough to stay away from a public forum when hammered (or “8 OV deep and starting a bottle of Porte” )
  - ilikecakemmm - Sep 30, 2012 at 4:14 PM
    
    Are you stupid or just an asshole
stakex - Sep 30, 2012 at 1:20 AM

I agree with most of what Barch says here, even if he does sound like hes pretty drunk.

However I just can’t stand listening to an NHL player cry poverty like Barch does at one point. Heres a breakdown of Barchs contracts over the last four years (can’t find info on the couple years before that):

2009 – $575k
2010 – $575k
2011 – $825k
2012 – $850k

So the guy has made $2,825,000 over the last four years, and is under contract to make another $1.5 million over the next two years. In six years hes going to make far more money then most people will make in their lifetime. Managed well, thats all the money he should ever need…. so don’t give me this “I’ll have to work for 50 years” crap, because thats only if you can’t manage money or blow it like an NBA draft pick.
- spetznaz777 - Sep 30, 2012 at 1:42 AM
  
  i see the numbers but hes an enforcer and the medical trends that are becoming known today is that krys barch will have some sort of hockey related health issues. that could become very expensive
  - stanleycoup - Sep 30, 2012 at 5:21 PM
    
    he’s a canuck. he gets it free.
- adlent - Sep 30, 2012 at 6:01 AM
  
  To be fair, he never said HE had to work for the next 50 years… he said a lot of his peers do.
- paperlions - Sep 30, 2012 at 10:18 AM
  
  You should see the money the owners are taking home every year….for doing nothing more than controlling arenas, most of which they didn’t pay to build….and the owners “careers” are far longer. Owners are fungible, any rich guy can make the crappy decisions the owners have been making. The players paid for the owners greed 7 years ago. Most of the problems are due to over-expansion, and the owners pocketed all of those hundreds of millions of dollars paid by “winning” bids for expansion franchises. Now the owners want the players to pay again for the fact that they have simply refused to make the tough decisions to fix their business problems.
- tatdue - Sep 30, 2012 at 1:21 PM
  
  To be fair you have to cut those numbers in half for taxes and also I’m not sure what percentage his agent gets but I know they get a percentage….You still end up with good money but he is by far not rich. Then once he’s done with the NHL what does an ex NHL enforcer do for a living, his earnings won’t last forever…specially with a wife and three kids. What the owners are trying to do to these guys is just wrong. If any of the players signed a bad contract the NHL would make them see it through but since it’s the NHL owners who have signed the bad contracts it’s ok for them to take the money back? Like I said…it’s just wrong….
gp424 - Sep 30, 2012 at 1:29 AM

Perspective for Barch

Average lifetime salary of a Police Officer 875,000
Average lifetime salary of a School Teacher 900,000
Yearly Salary of President of the USA: 400,000
Poverty Level 17,500
Min Wage (varies by state), by highest Washington 9.04 per hour
Barch’s Salary per minute on the Ice in 2011-12: 2,500.00 Dollars a minute
Number of Employees hired by Barch 0
Number of Employees hired by Owners: Average team has about 3 or 400 employees.
- ravenscaps48 - Sep 30, 2012 at 12:12 PM
  
  WELL SAID!
mydadyourmom - Sep 30, 2012 at 2:24 AM

Far removed from reality.
nhlpasomisinformed - Sep 30, 2012 at 2:54 AM

Pretty ridiculous blog, which just makes fans like me side more and more with the owners.

First off, the NHL isn’t the NBA/NFL/MLB.

Secondly, do these players understand how the business world/economics work? Feel bad for them, as i don’t think they do, and Fehr seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping them misinformed.

With regards to the blog, it’s pretty ridiculous. 50 years of employment?! Boohoo barch, you think the common man is going to sympathize with the millionaire players on this point. I believe your bottom line income since coming into the league is closing in on $3 million.

Are you or the PA feeling bad about the decrease in pay so much that you don’t feel bad about putting numerous players in the European leagues out of work? Go ahead, continue being locked out, and turn away your million(s) pay check and go make 100ks out in Europe.

The fans, at least the informed fans, are easily more inclined to side with the owners again here. It’s a world of economics, and handing out 57% of the revenue without sharing in the risks is just bad business.

Get Fehr to start doing some real/realistic negotiation or send us pics of Europe or the ECHL….
- hockeydon10 - Oct 1, 2012 at 9:35 AM
  
  First: What does that have to do with anything? The NFL and MLB are much larger than NHL. (The NBA is also larger, but not to the extend of the NFL or MLB.) So? I’ll spell it out; the way percentages work it doesn’t matter if the NFL pulled in $100M and pays their players over 30 times in actual dollars what the NHL does. If the NHL makes less in revenue, the players get less. That’s how percentages work.
  
  Second: Based on their proposal that sees revenue sharing going to the teams that are the weakest financially — which the owners have rejected — it seems they do see the economics of the situation. They understand that stronger teams in weak markets (Phoenix, Columbus) means drawing more fans, which means more revenues to share (share with the owners, who would then also benefit from bolstering these weak teams). In short, if those teams get stronger, they pull in more revenue, meaning the players get their percentage of a larger net amount.
  
  Third: A lot of people are not going to sympathize with millionaires. So your response is to deride these millionaire players in order to pad the pockets of and side with the billionaire owners? That’s a very strange twist of logic.
  
  Fourth: You’re the one saying he doesn’t feel bad about the dozens of Euro league players being put out of work. He doesn’t mention it one way or the other. You’re putting words into his mouth.
  
  Fifth: Who says the PA is asking for 57% of revenue? (Answer: you are.) The players current proposal has them starting at 54.3% and going DOWN from there (to a low of 52.3%). Keep in mind, this is with more room left to negotiate. Only a fool puts his bottom line in his first proposal when negotiating. I’d bet that if the players saw an offer with no kickbacks to the owners (who got what they wanted with the 57% seven years ago), but over the course of a few years saw the percentage reduced to 50%, we’d see real progress in a very short time.
  
  Sixth: Ask Savard, et. al. if the players don’t take risks.
jimw81 - Sep 30, 2012 at 3:16 AM

I hope someone close to Barch from nhlpa or close friends or family members got intouch with him after those tweets went on twitter. Writing what he wrote on twitter is serious and should be never overlooked not matter the situation.

Barch isn’t alone with his thoughts on lockout. He basically told the truth from a players and fans point of view of the lockout but will anyone listen?
- sabatimus - Oct 1, 2012 at 4:25 PM
  
  I’m actually worried about Barch’s personal health and safety after that drinking and gun talk.
navzgm - Sep 30, 2012 at 4:14 AM

I heard you shouldn’t drink to ease the pain
- sabatimus - Oct 1, 2012 at 4:26 PM
  
  It does not help in the long run, no.
r3alta1k - Sep 30, 2012 at 8:30 AM

How can you side with the owners? Oh the players make millions…really. Compare their salary to policemen, teachers, etc…Is that their fault that our world spends more on entertainment? Look, the owners make enough to support the 400 employees so that line was a joke. Th real issue is the mismanagement of funds and bad business decisions by some owners. We always talk about players who should be able to manage their millions but we never discuss owners. We, meaning the workers, are always against each other, looking to the left or right, rather than looking up. Why is it so easy to find a players salary but not an owners? How can you side with a owner…You’ve been fooled! Please someone do a salary breakdown of a owner and their expenses…oh that’s right they won’t open their books, that’s bad business, and them the workers would gain knowledge…Silly Rabbits
- somekat - Sep 30, 2012 at 9:50 AM
  
  player take no econmoic risk in this business venture.
  
  Your point it moot
  - somekat - Sep 30, 2012 at 9:52 AM
    
    and what non-publicly owned business would open their books to anyone that doesn’t have a warrant? Those middle school business classes you took really aren’t paying off
  - paperlions - Sep 30, 2012 at 10:22 AM
    
    Yeah, all of those poor rich guys that run to the poor house after owning a pro team. The worst owner in the NHL still makes money on the entire venture (maybe not as much as they would like, or as much as they could owning something else), but they all make money….and none risk their long-term health to do it.
savior72 - Sep 30, 2012 at 9:42 AM

Just another drunk goon too stupid to see the big picture
.
rebekah319 - Sep 30, 2012 at 9:50 AM

As much as I appreciate his thoughts I still stick with my feelings 100 percent that its both sides fault and they need to take full responsibility for what has happened whether they like it or not!!! There is no blame game if they wanted to get this done they would have by now and we would not be ranting about it! So if they wish to ever play hockey again I suggest they start showing some real signs of movement in that room otherwise these words are a waste!
rainyday56 - Sep 30, 2012 at 10:47 AM

” I have made it through sweating, bleeding, cut Achilles, broken hands, concussions, broken orbital bones, 8 teeth knocked out, etc, etc, etc. ” That’s good pain Krys. That’s HOCKEY PAIN! That’s the kind of pain that creates endorphins after a game well played. If it is any other for you, then quit and work for 50 years.
r3alta1k - Sep 30, 2012 at 10:52 AM

some may..if missing the point. It’s interesting that we know player salaries. Are they public workers? no they are not, so why is it our business…you don’t find that odd, do you really think its just happenstance? The insults are unnecessary, as we r on the internet, so attempting to match wits, knowledge, or intelligence with you would be futile. Stick to the topic, voice opinions, move on…Again my point is, if the players are considered selfish, over paid, or what other jealously fueled insults thrown their way, WHAT ARE THE OWNERS?
- r3alta1k - Sep 30, 2012 at 11:29 AM
  
  some may = @somekat
dutchman1350 - Sep 30, 2012 at 3:30 PM

Both sides are fighting over OUR money. Many cannot AFFORD to go see a game live because of ticket prices.
martysbetter - Sep 30, 2012 at 5:51 PM

What a kook.

Whining about having to work for the next 50 years?

WELCOME TO REALITY FOR EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET!

You want me to feel sorry for you because you expect to be able to play hockey for 10-15 years and then never have to work a day again in your life?

Get bent.
thankscurt38 - Sep 30, 2012 at 8:19 PM

Ridiculous and stupid.

Poor you. I am a college graduate who is unemployed right now. I can’t find a full time job for the life of me that will pay me $25,000 a year, let along the minimum salary that these clowns make.

If you don’t like what the owners want to pay you, quit and find a new job. That is how it works in the real world. That is how it works in the NHL. The owners aren’t pretending to be in it for “the love of the game.” They are willing to risk their money to try to make a lot of money.

I’m sick of these players and their in ability to understand the world of economics even on a basic level. I hope the NHL owners keeps these clowns locked out for as long as it takes for the players to cave like they always do and only make 45% of revenues. I can’t believe I cheer for these some idiots to play for my team. Like seriously, read an Econ101 textbook.
- bulldozer20 - Oct 1, 2012 at 10:19 AM
  
  Looks like you should have read a little more of that econ101 textbook and then you’d actually be a good asset to a company….plug
sippindasyzurp - Oct 1, 2012 at 10:22 AM

Although I will say I understand that these guys play through a lot of injuries and block shots and all, but if your going to try and lead a life into professional hockey as a grinder is this not what you sign up for?

I mean this is what you chose to do… Every career comes with some sort of risk, and playing hockey you run the risk of, being concussed multiple times, missing teeth, broken noses, LOCKOUTS, lost salary etc..

These guys make more money than doctors who perform open heart surgery to save people’s lives… Lockouts make me wonder why I support professional sports as they are fighting over my money that I give them as a fan, and the outcome at the end of the lockout is not going to help me gain anything financially..

This twitter rant of Kris Barch is the first sign that slowly the union is going to slowly begin to crumble as he is the type of player that might lose his job if the whole season is cancelled… Sitting out a season in favour of trying to get a better deal for the future of the league is not going to help Kris Barch individually as a person as he will start losing money he will never see again, and may not have a career in pro hockey after this mess is settled… I am sure this little rant echo’s the thoughts of many of the 3rd and 4th liners in the NHL.
jpelle82 - Oct 1, 2012 at 10:49 AM

i thought twitter had 140 character limit…should prevent drunken rants like this
- sabatimus - Oct 1, 2012 at 4:28 PM
  
  Hence the “series of tweets” phrase above.
eskurtaco - Oct 2, 2012 at 1:07 PM

Hey Krys, how much of the $250,000,000 did you chip in to be an owner? Think about this business proposition – you invest 100% of your money but only get 57% back. And, they even want to take MORE than that! and if they don’t get it they are going to take their skates and go to Sweden, Russia or Switzerland.

And you have a contract, right? Which I assumed you signed and agreed to your compensation, and, I would bet that you’ve received 100% of your agreed to salary, right?

I wish the players would start to break rank and start playing the game that they are under contract to play. What a bunch of spoiled, whiny babies…

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