They made *57%* of HRR over the last CBA. FIFTY SEVEN(!)

And, FYI, they already make more on average than NFL players 2.4M to 1.9M.

Get some facts.

They, despite what people may have thought at the time, “won” the last CBA. salaries went up 17, 10, and 15% in the last 3 years. Yes average salaries went down in 04 22% but that really was reigning in the “yankees” of the NHL by instituting the cap. The average player made out like a bindit on this CBA in part due to the cap floor.

So yes, get some facts please.

Did you notice that the Boston Bruins are not represented on the player’s negotiating committee? Billionaire Jacobs vs millionaire players.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8732678/donald-fehr-nhl-lockout

” in Detroit, the owner of the Red Wings, a pizza billionaire named Mike Ilitch, has decided to blackjack a new $650 million arena out of the city of Detroit for his $346 million hockey team. (In 1982, Ilitch paid $8 million for the team. This is an appreciation that one can, well, appreciate.) This naked swindle makes Ilitch a real sweetheart, seeing as how the financing for his new digs is going to come from tax dollars collected by Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority, which, for more than 20 years, has been collecting money to pay down some general obligation bonds. Now that the bonds are paid off, the money was supposed to go to Detroit’s decimated public-school system. Instead, it’s going into Ilitch’s arena.”

“Nonetheless, Fehr was very good at protecting the gains that the MLBPA had made against almost constant attempts to roll them back. At the same time, he found himself doing so in a general social and cultural context in which seeing a union behave like an actual union was supposed to behave struck everyone silly with shock and wonder. Hell, after a while, most of the people following sports hadn’t even been around when unions actually held substantial political power. Most of the NHL owners had become rich in the modern plutocratic system. In that system, the power of unions had been broken. Consequently, they were neither prepared, nor predisposed, to reckon with actual unions that had actual power, such as the ones that were operating among the teams they’d bought with their fortunes. (Mike Ilitch got rich in an industry that isn’t unionized at all.) And most of the people covering the events in question were people who’d seen their unions squeezed dry by the financial-services cowboys who increasingly controlled the American media. Small wonder, then, that, when Fehr resisted mandatory drug testing at the beginning of the current drug frenzy, people behaved as though he were lining up players to personally shoot HGH into their keisters.”

The only good thing, as one of those betrayed and annoyed hardcore fans, is knowing that businesses are cutting their NHL ticket expense budgets, that the NHL will suffer for this at least in the short-term when they return, and most importantly, that the Bettman and Daly have to sweat it out infront of these microphones, with their plan to have the game back on ice by now blowing up in their face, and knowing the tarnished legacy they are leaving.

Ron Hainsey
SEASON SALARY
2008-09 $5,000,000
2009-10 $5,000,000
2010-11 $5,000,000
2011-12 $5,000,000
2012-13 $3,000,000 GP=56, G=0, A=10

Brandon Prust
SEASON SALARY
2010-11 $800,000
2011-12 $800,000 GP=82, G=5, A=12
2012-13 $3,000,000
2013-14 $2,500,000
2014-15 $2,500,000
2015-16 $2,000,000

Can you say thank you, Mr. Bettman.

I know times are tough, but with the money rolling into the league there should be a compromise to be reached. The Players haven’t made nearly the crazy demands they did during the 2004-2005 lockout. Bettman and ownership need to give in this time and they will realize it will be for the benifit of the game and their fans if they do!