The Lockout is Over

Well, it looks like the National Heartbreak League will have a season after all. I’m not among those who vowed not to return to the sport, but remember that I vowed to only support one team due to the horrific rule changes after the last lockout.

Let me go back a little and provide my take on the events that led to the agreement. It all started with the league’s emphasis on PR stunts and posturing to the media. The league made a couple offers that were never meant to actually prevent the lockout. They asked the players to give far more than anyone could have possibly expected. This would make the later demands seem more reasonable, and they could also point to how much they moved when they finally started to take things seriously.

An interesting component to the throw away proposals was that the league insisted that the players association would not agree to negotiate earlier. This was also a PR move. The initial proposals from the league proved that they didn’t want to negotiate until after the lockout had begun. Earlier negotiations would have only resulted in the illegitimate proposals being made earlier. The league still would have waited until after games had been cancelled.

After the first batch of games had been cancelled, the league made its first legitimate offer. They tried to waive around the possibility of rescheduling lost games to play a full season. This was an attempt to push the players to just accept the deal rather than work out something that both sides would agree to.

The players association followed with three counteroffers. They didn’t support an immediate move to the 50/50 revenue split that the league offered, but they agreed to work their way to that value. Negotiations came to a grinding halt. The league didn’t want to negotiate. They wanted the players to fold.

After that came… nothing. There were a few conversations here and there, but there was absolutely no urgency and very little movement between the two sides. During this time, the league insisted that they were the good guys because they kept an offer on the table that the players already rejected instead of trying anything new.

Eventually, the league and union agreed to something a little different. The players and owners would meet without their leaders. A lot of people were indicating that the two sides were close to a deal. Fehr (the head of the players association) joined the players, and reports surrounding the discussions became a lot more negative in a hurry. Then the owners turned to their dictator, Garry Bettman, to say that the deal that the owners thought was acceptable was off the table.

Some details were leaked, and it sounds like the owners were trying to offer some financial incentives to get the players to accept what was essentially the same offer as before. Meanwhile, the players were trying to negotiate. In all fairness to the league, they insisted that the points the players were negotiating on were not negotiable.

Bettman resorted to another PR move. He criticized the players for just accepting the financial concession and negotiating from there. Let me go back for a moment. During the last lockout, the players offered a salary rollback in hopes of avoiding a salary cap. The league acknowledged the concession, added it to a proposal that had already been rejected, and offered the new less-desirable offer to the players. As far as I’m concerned, the league had no right to criticize the players for trying to work out a deal that included the league’s concession.

This leader-less process also raised some interesting questions. The owners basically brought a take-it-or-leave it proposal, and they were hoping that the players would take it if they didn’t get advice from Fehr. The players went into the meeting with a desire to negotiate. What does it say that Fehr trusted the players more with the negotiating process than Bettman trusted the owners?

Talks fell apart until after the league cancelled enough games to leave them the minimum that they were willing to play this season. Initially, we had more of the silence. Before long, that changed. The league made a new offer. In other words, they actually moved off of their initial proposal. Talks become more frequent and both sides became active in trading proposals.

What did I expect from all of this? I was cautiously optimistic. The key to getting a deal done was to get the league to actually make a movement in the direction of the players. I felt that the players would want one more concession, possibly small, and a deal would be accepted. I wasn’t sure whether or not the league would cooperate considering how stubborn they were when it came to moving off of their initial offer. But like I said, they didn’t have to move much. I don’t know the details between the two sides in the final push to save the season, but an agreement was made. The deal isn’t final, but I’m pretty sure that the players and owner will agree.

As you can clearly tell, I sided with the players during the lockout. I don’t want to ignore issues on the players side. After all, I don’t think that there’s any questions that the personalities of NHL players has reached an all-time low. They could have moved a little more a little earlier. More importantly, they could have actually pushed a little harder to make something happen. All their offers seemed to be responses to the league’s offers, and it always seemed to be the league that would break the silence. Regardless, I think Gary Bettman has managed to take his boo-ability to a new level.