I love when the schmucks like you think they know more than an entire union. Why aren’t we playing hockey yet? Have the Fehr brothers and the entire PA been so foolish as to not contact id4joey?

DERRRRRRR

Now, both sides can do what they want. Players don’t have to accept. However, by not accepting they stand to lose more money than if they were to accept. Are you old enough to remember what happened in 2004-05? If so, then please explain how players, for example, Jerone Iginla, recovered the $7 million he lost that year. Here you go, young man, an opportunity to prove you have the intellect to rationalize. I impatiently await.

He was commish during age of massive TV contracts. The MLB, NFL and NBA all saw massive growth in value over the same period. The only way to stop the value of your league from rising would have been to refuse to sign those TV contracts.

But Gary even managed to screw that up. After (*becuase of?) the 04-05 lockout, ESPN declined their option to retain the cable rights to the NHL. NBC was the only network willing to purchase those rights, and even they wouldn’t pay any money up front.

Does anyone actually believe that the exposure the NHL has seen while being aired on Versus/NBCSports (No offense, PHT) has been more beneficial to the league than that which ESPN could have provided?

Luongo has $47,284,000 left to be paid on his contract, and to be paid as shown in the left column, and how he would get paid if they agreed to have their contracts restructured in the right column.
2012-13 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2013-14 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2014-15 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2015-16 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2016-17 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2017-18 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2018-19 – $3,382,000 – $4,728,400
2019-20 – $1,618,000 – $4,728,400
2020-21 – $1,000,000 – $4,728,400
2021-22 – $1,000,000 – $4,728,400

The current cap hit for this contract is $5,333,333, and would be $4,728,400 if they can restructure.

The yearly amount for a restructured contract may differ. The NHL’s proposal indicated that there can be no more than a 5% differential year over year. Is it really in Luongo’s best interest to lose 6.7m this year or lose 2m and make up for the lost over the remaining years of his contract?

That’s why I keep hoping for the players to see the lesser of 2 evils. Am I that far off? Doesn’t it make more financial sense to take the hit now?

Luongo has $47,284,000 left to be paid on his contract, and to be paid as shown in the left column, and how he would get paid if they agreed to have their contracts restructured in the right column.
2012-13 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2013-14 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2014-15 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2015-16 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2016-17 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2017-18 – $6,714,000 – $4,728,400
2018-19 – $3,382,000 – $4,728,400
2019-20 – $1,618,000 – $4,728,400
2020-21 – $1,000,000 – $4,728,400
2021-22 – $1,000,000 – $4,728,400

The current cap hit for this contract is $5,333,333, and would be $4,728,400 if they can restructure.

The yearly amount for a restructured contract may differ. The NHL’s proposal indicated that there can be no more than a 5% differential year over year. Is it really in Luongo’s best interest to lose 6.7m this year or lose 2m and make up for the lost over the remaining years of his contract?

That’s why I keep hoping for the players to see the lesser of 2 evils. Am I that far off? Doesn’t it make more financial sense to take the hit now? Tell you what. If I get 100 thumbs down because of this logic, then I’m out of here

Wow. Hey, you sound like a great employee that I would love to hire. How about I offer you 75K the first year, and then next year 70K because I’m going to need a little help in 12 months when I decide to take my perfectly good business model and expand it into new unknown markets. If everything goes as planned, the first three years in my new location will be extremely difficult, so we can cut 5-7K per year as needed. Wow, thanks man! You are really keeping my business alive! Great employee!! Great!!

Sigh….. now, go ahead… call me names. Tell me I don’t know anything about America or capitalism or history. Go on… do it. I’ll wait.

Feel better? Great. The truth is I am a business owner with employees. I bootstrapped my business at the start up and have ALWAYS found a way to offer my employees good pay, solid benefits, and, of course (it goes without saying!!) I have always honored my contracts. Turns out, I am also a historian by training with an emphasis on American History from the republic to the the modern day.

In business, deals are cut to mutually benefit the invested parties. When one side exploits an opportunity to seize power and squash the other side, that other side is going to quickly go from business associate to competitor. That’s EXACTLY what you see here. NHL and NHLPA competing for the greatest returns from the same target market (fans). The

Strictly from a business perspective, I think the owners have botched this one. They tried to turn the screws on the players too hard, too fast. What they will (probably) eventually gain by reneging on past agreements, they are going to lose out from an entirely wasted season.

Investments aren’t the question. Those are safe as a 50/50 split has been more or less accepted.

If an owner could buy the Coyotes and move them to Hamilton? I guarantee you there will be rich men lined around the corner to bid for them.

Contraction is not the answer: removing teams from non traditional markets for hockey IS the answer. The Coyotes need to move. The Blue Jackets need to move. The owners got greedy because they all got a chunk of cash when a team is added to the league. Now they want it both ways, to claim the losses of the bottom 5-6 teams and say the league is unsuccessful when they’re the ones that approved adding teams that had no business being created!

Then they block moves for teams to move to Hamilton, why? It would make everyone more money, but nope.

You live by the sword, you die by the sword. The owners live by the greed, and they will die by the greed.

How many of the bottom teams are expansion teams or teams moved from traditional hockey markets to non-traditional hockey markets? Atlanta, Phoenix, Columbus, Anaheim, Florida, Nashville…the one major exception is the Islanders but that’s because their rink is terrible and they were in limbo for ages trying to move to another location within NY.

Now here’s another thing that some of you people do not understand (ok most of you) the owners can take huge tax breaks with the depreciation of their assets for accounting purposes. NONE OF THESE OWNERS ARE LOSING MONEY. You are just sheep who cannot understand basic tax strategies. These men are billionaires or close to billionaires: do you think they lose money on their investments? They did not become rich by being idiots!

Read this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2012/04/06/new-dodgers-investors-will-get-big-tax-breaks/

While the owners write off the depreciation of their assets (player contracts, arenas-if owned by the team, etc) they also get to double dip by writing off the player contracts as expenses. This allows the owners to DOUBLE DIP. Oh, and while they might be losing incrementally small amounts of money year to year, they make up for it because when they sell the team they usually make 3-4 times the purchase price of the franchise when they sell the team. Not to mention the fact that owners also scam the taxpayers into building them an arena.

I’m not pro-player, but this woe is me act from the owners is getting old. And it’s pathetic that anyone sympathizes with them. This is a business. They made the decisions to expand the league: not the players. They made the decision to sign the players to huge contracts that they couldn’t afford: players didn’t hold a gun to their heads. They killed a season to get THIS deal last time. The players have come to the middle. This salary cap business is bogus too. Let teams spend what they want to spend on players. Let there be no salary cap floor. Let the subsidization of the poor teams by the rich teams end: sink or swim. This weird mixture of socialism and capitalism in sports is starting to drive me bonkers. Make up your minds: grant every NHL player free agency and rip up all the contracts. Do you think the players will make more or less money? Make contracts a one year deal with a mutual option that either side can agree to renew but the second year is not guaranteed. After that year, the player is a UFA.

But that’s neither here nor there re: this dispute, because the players are not remotely comparable to a regular union. I think you underestimate just how huge a chunk of the current stock of elite hockey talent are nhlpa members. There are no 700-odd other human beings in the world right now who could step in and provide anywhere near the same level of play that the nhlpa does, not to mention the emotional investment fans have in current players. Even if the owners just decided to scrap the current players and move on to new talent, why wouldn’t the new players (who, by your description, are just as deserving as the current players) turn right around and organize a new union? They’d be stupid not to. Where does that leave your argument that this particular group of players are exceptionally ungrateful of their privileged position, and that those who follow will “like the soup” any better?

$129.5M in losses combined by ALL the leagues teams that showed operating income losses
$279.2M in profits combined by JUST the top 6 teams that showed operating income profits

So if JUST the top 6 teams divided it up they would have to give $21.58M each to make up the difference. That means those top 6 teams would still show profits of:

Toronto: $60.32M (’12 Operating profits $81.9M)
NYR: $52.42M (’12 Operating profits $74M)
Mtl: $30.02M (’12 Operating profits $51.6M)
Van: $8.82M (’12 Operating profits $30.4M)
Det: $-780K (’12 Operating profits $20.8M)
Chic: $-1.08M (’12 Operating profits $20.5M)

So that’s just the breakdown of the top 6 teams, with them making equal sharing which isn’t the way it should go, the richest teams give more of the percentage. The next 6 teams combined made $70.1M in profits. So it’s not like if they broke all that up amongst all those teams they couldn’t still make a profit.. . considering the players already caved in to give up an additional 7% of HRR, so they should make what they made plus that 7% plus whatever growth incurs. I’m not saying its a ‘cure all’ but its not nearly as bleak as you made it out to be. I do agree that contracts need to be handled, I also think a soft cap should be instituted so teams don’t have to spend to a solid floor if they don’t want to. Both of which would help but the real key to this is a TRUE profit sharing, IF the NHL wants to keep teams in the locals they are in.