I would suggest that if you ask Henrik Sedin what he thinks of playing for the Aquilinis, Mike Gillis and the Canucks organization as a whole he would be full of praise and class – like he always is.

If you ask Henrik Sedin how the players are being treated in negotiations by the league, you’ll get a response like the one above. Which I think is fair; these negotiations have been acrimonious and the league has repeatedly insulted the players intelligence (Don Fehr has done the same right back to the league, don’t get me wrong, although I think that falls more into the realm of gamesmanship/rhetoric personally).

Anyway we are all hypersensitive at this point and just want this over with.. you can see my own hypersensitivity in the fact that I happened upon a comments section with a few pointed criticisms of one of my favourite players and proceeded to respond 15 times.

The players are entitled to an exact portion of total HRR and every season they get it – either by way of escrow deductions going to the league to correct overages or payments being made to the players to correct… “underages” (gotta be a better way to say that).

Bottom line is that in a 50/50 scenario the players get 50% of HRR no matter what contracts are signed.

Of course, the huge discrepancy between HRR and actual revenue is another story altogether.

I don’t get the correlation between entertainers being overpaid and Toronto being a $1b franchise. They are rich because they have a huge fan base, which means good tv contracts, revenue generated by adds, season tickets, merchandising etc… There market is bigger than say the market in Winnipeg.

Bettman came in with a clear mandate from the owners, which was to expand the market in the U.S. how? Put more teams there. We have to stop blaming him for the sunbelt teams, no team is added to the NHL without the approval of the board of governors/owners. Why? They get big bucks from the retry fee associated with expansion.

The owners can recoup money lost because they have years to make up for it. Their in business for a long time. They can increase the cost of tickets, merchandizing, prices at the concession stands, etc etc etc.. How can the players do the same? They can’t. Their value depreciates over time, whereas the value of a franchise will likely appreciate over time.

It would have been great to ride the wave from last year. Unfortunately, the last CBA had loopholes exploited by crafty GMs and supported by wealthier owners. This is not good for parity.

The player’s negotiating power happens during the life of the CBA when their contract is up, and based on their past performance their agents negotiate and attempt to squeeze every penny they can from the owners. The owners negotiating power happens when the CBA is expired, and a new deal needs to be negotiated. That’s just the business side of the sport whether we like or not.

Why were Psrise and Suter signed to these front loaded contracts during the summer? Simple. Only the richest owners could afford them under the expired CBA. And, they used one of the loop holes, which was front loading a contract. Say the Wild doesn’t sign them. What next? Some other rich team would have signed them. What if no one would have signed them? Then they would have been up for grabs for the less wealthier teams under the new CBA, and the richer owner, like Leopoldo, would have lost out. Don’t think for one minute that not only Leopold knew what the NHL was planning. Players’ agent knew very well what was coming, and so did the players. It’s the agents job to know these things so he can get the most money for his client.

The players want to get the best deal possible, however, they’ll only get what the owners want to give them. Once the players get their heads around how much owners are willing to budge, or not, then they will sign.

Players are entertainers. All entertainers are overpaid. If the players are too greedy please explain to me why Toronto has a team worth a billion dollars? Seems like an owner knows how to run a franchise to turn profit. Bettman and his southern hockey experiment is what has diluted the league and the only way out is to keep locking the players out until there is no league left.
Last year’s playoffs were awesome and the players didn’t make any extra money, only the owners. I miss hockey. My team wasn’t even in the playoffs but I loved the games.
The players aren’t the only ones who have lost more than they will gain through the lifetime of the next CBA, the owners have too.
I just think that riding the momentum of last year would have been a sound, economic decision but instead the owners got greedy and underestimated the players’ resolve.
I hate Fehr as much as Bettman but I understand that the players can’t just keep giving in to everything every time they are locked out or these lockouts will happen every CBA.
I’m done arguing, I just want to watch the NHL. Last I checked that decision is completely up to the owners. They are, after all, locking the players out.

Thanks, I always appreciate your comments.

As you know, record revenues do not always equate to record profits. There is no doubt that expenses associated with running a franchise have increased over the term of the last agreement, and all these increased expenses have been borne by the owners from their share (43%-46%).

Re: HRR, It is my opinion that the players should share in hockey RELATED revenue only. I don’t think you are suggesting that they should share in any revenue generated from rock concerts that are viewed from luxury boxes, are you? Hockey owners shouldn’t be required to share revenue that isn’t related to hockey.

BTW, I believe the owners are the lesser of two evils here, and both Bettman and Fehr are d’bags.

2 girls

No Cup

Yes the players did well after 2004-05 because the league as a whole did well. That wasn’t good enough for owners so now they want to grab back even more than they got.

As for why the players were willing to play under the old CBA, well firstly because it would allow for no cancelled games and would mean they could keep earning paycheques while negotiating. Secondly because the CBA turned out to be pretty good for the players due to the revenue growth that took place. Thirdly, winning so resoundingly in 2004-05 meant the league figured they could extract another pound of flesh this time around and that the next CBA will almost certainly be less favourable to the players than this past one was.

On the subject of HRR, of course I don’t have an inside source – and if I did I wouldn’t be wasting my time in the comments section on PHT (no offense folks). That being said here are a couple of links that go into why it is such a big issue and why “50/50″ doesn’t mean the same thing in the NHL as it would in another league:

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/opinion/2012/09/making-sense-of-hockey-related-revenue.html
http://www.wingingitinmotown.com/2012/9/30/3427436/misconceptions
http://www.defendingbigd.com/2012/9/27/3418286/2012-nhl-lockout-nfl-nhlpa-bettman-fehr/in/3184643

Some key points include the fact that teams can currently deduct 54% of concession revenue from HRR, and the vast majority of teams can deduct 30-65% of luxury box revenue, plus another ~3%. Furthermore they can also “cheat” by using high deduction perks like concessions and parking (30%) to give to customers for buying season ticket packages, which means less HRR.

Additionally in the NFL CBA negotiation last year the players gave up “12% of revenue” but the league gave up a $1 billion cost deduction they had been taking, the net result was a nearly identical figure for player salaries as under the previous CBA.

After the last CBA was signed, Bettman himself said it was an excellent deal for both sides and would resolve the issues that previously plagued the NHL and the owners in particular. Why is it that after years of record revenue his tune has changed, and the last CBA was so detrimental that it requires major concessions only from the players to make the NHL work in future? Was he wrong originally, and if so, why is he right this time around?

About the HRR, by definition it is a subset of total revenues a team generates relating only to hockey specific streams. Things like revenue from luxury boxes in the arenas can be deducted from HRR as they might also earn revenue in part from concerts and other events. That means that 50% of HRR is not truly 50% of all revenue that the hockey team itself generates, and it’s even less than the revenue the parent company of the team earns as a part of it’s overall profit margin.

One thing people keep focussing on (incorrectly) is the players were guaranteed 57%. They weren’t, they were given 54% of HRR with a clause stating that if revenues were above a certain point, they’d get 57% of HRR. Since there were record revenues, the players got the bump up in percentage of HRR. They got the 54/57% share because they gave up significantly to the owners in the form of a salary cap, and now the owners want to take away the HRR and player contracting concessions the NHLPA got last time but still keep the cap.

This is also what the players are talking about when they include things like how their HRR amount can’t be less than the previous year (starting year 2) as it is a clause to encourage the NHL to look at ways to continue growth. Otherwise the NHL can just keep trying to prop up the same money losing franchises and move money they make outside of HRR so the players don’t get a cut.

If it was only about players losing a possible 7% of the HRR share to get a deal done, it would have been done a long time ago. It’s also about not losing in every other area – particularly player contracting rights they fought so hard for last time – and making sure the owners at least try and honour the massive contracts they offered despite knowing they’d ask to roll them back in the next CBA.

If the PA was spanked as bad as you say they were in the last CBA, then why were they so anxious to extend the agreement? Lets face it, the players have come out way in front over the period of the last agreement. Their salaries, under the last agreement, have grown at a rate that exceeds the growth rate of athletes in other sports. It’s little wonder the players would be satisfied with the status quo.

As far as HHR, do you have any inside info that proves your point that 50% really isn’t 50% ?