Thread: We are BACK!!!! NHL AND NHLPA REACH DEAL ON COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT

Originally Posted by aaron

awl.
the nfl has no local tv. try to get the nhl to agree to that
mlb and nba have no hard cap. they have high salary teams, and low salary teams. 50% of franchises in both sports are eliminated from contention before the season starts. try to get the nhl to agree to that.

until the nhl solves their ownership differences between themselves, and not through lower players costs, there will be no peace.
As was pointed out by Marc Cuban in a video, buying into the nhl makes no economic sense as long as there is a North / South conflict.

buying into the NHL makes no sense to him when some of the teams are losing money. your arguments and usage of marc cuban don't go together...

Originally Posted by aaron

awl.
the nfl has no local tv. try to get the nhl to agree to that
mlb and nba have no hard cap. they have high salary teams, and low salary teams. 50% of franchises in both sports are eliminated from contention before the season starts. try to get the nhl to agree to that.

until the nhl solves their ownership differences between themselves, and not through lower players costs, there will be no peace.
As was pointed out by Marc Cuban in a video, buying into the nhl makes no economic sense as long as there is a North / South conflict.

I don't understand the relevance of any of these references to other American sports leagues.

The NFL is an anomaly in that there's enough national interest in just about every game to warrant national coverage. No other sports league can say that. So there's no need for local TV game coverage in the case of the NFL. Not having to share local TV money makes global revenue sharing a lot easier.

Why on earth would the NHL agree to a soft-cap or luxury tax, having sacrificed a whole season to achieve a hard cap?

The simple fact of the matter is that the percentage of revenue going to the players in the last CBA was untenable over the long-term. Going into this current CBA negotiation, everyone (including the players) knew the players would be taking a financial bath, so to speak. As a result, we'll see a revenue split reduced rather dramatically, from 57/43 to 50/50, although the make-whole dollars going the other way aren't insignificant either. There's no question that lower player costs will be the new reality once the new CBA goes into effect, whenever that is.

Originally Posted by Bogey

Twitter / RenLavoieRDS: As reported on @hockey360, ...

So... how's a Professional Trade Association different?

These people need to stop doing things with names I don't understand.

Originally Posted by FishMonger

So... how's a Professional Trade Association different?

These people need to stop doing things with names I don't understand.

I don't think that's an important development. Unless I'm mistaken, it just means there will still be an association of NHL players, just not a union or any other entity to represent them in collective bargaining. The same thing happened to the NBPA last year.

Hooray for bureaucracy!

It's a damn good thing they're focusing on this. It's not like there's any other pressing issues to deal with now.

... or would this mean no CBA in general?




I think I'm just confused and angry

Originally Posted by AWL

The simple fact of the matter is that the percentage of revenue going to the players in the last CBA was untenable over the long-term. Going into this current CBA negotiation, everyone (including the players) knew the players would be taking a financial bath, so to speak. As a result, we'll see a revenue split reduced rather dramatically, from 57/43 to 50/50, although the make-whole dollars going the other way aren't insignificant either. There's no question that lower player costs will be the new reality once the new CBA goes into effect, whenever that is.

the cba isn't just between players and owners. if it were, the lockout would have been over long ago. It's about owners setting the ground rules amongst themselves. right now, they are fighting about closing loopholes that their own general managers found to subvert the last cba.
And even when the league gets it's new better cba, general managers are going to try to subvert it. because they want to win and keep their job. Until the nhl changes the economic dynamics of high revenue teams and low revenue teams, the rich teams will find ways to spend on players, and the poor teams will have to struggle to be competitive. no matter how many loopholes they close, it will still happen. there will always be tension. and cba fights.

A guess on my part: converting the union to a trade association should make it easier to re-certify (or whatever the term would be if they disclaim instead) the union to approve the CBA, whenever it is agreed to by the negotiating committees. Regardless of whether you think the disclaimer vote is a positive or negative development, voting also to maintain a trade association doesn't make the situation any better or any worse, in my opinion. It's just a natural consequence of decertifying or disclaiming with the expectation that the union will be reconstituted at a later time.

Originally Posted by aaron

the cba isn't just between players and owners. if it were, the lockout would have been over long ago. It's about owners setting the ground rules amongst themselves. right now, they are fighting about closing loopholes that their own general managers found to subvert the last cba.
And even when the league gets it's new better cba, general managers are going to try to subvert it. because they want to win and keep their job. Until the nhl changes the economic dynamics of high revenue teams and low revenue teams, the rich teams will find ways to spend on players, and the poor teams will have to struggle to be competitive. no matter how many loopholes they close, it will still happen. there will always be tension. and cba fights.

Let's take a step back to view things more broadly.

The last CBA was a grand experiment. No other sports league had ever utilized a salary cap quite like the NHL's, so it's not as though the two sides agreed to a time-tested model, the consequences of which should have been easily predictable. In many ways, it turned out to be anything but predictable. But over the course of the last 7 years, we've learned a lot about how the salary cap works and how it doesn't work. This time around, they'll try to put those lessons to use, as evidenced by the owners' proposals to date. Those proposals address all of the most popular ways to circumvent the cap, such as very long contracts with massive front-loading, back-diving or both, burying players in the minors, etc. Creative, to be sure, but there were only ever a few methods devised. Once these methods are entirely eliminated, of course, we still can't definitively rule out other creative ways to circumvent the cap; what we can rule out, however, is the idea that there are endless ways to circumvent the cap and there always will be. So long as there aren't any major overhauls to the basic salary cap system, we should expect that even if loopholes still exist, the impact of these loopholes should be greatly reduced. Over time, we can expect the system to be refined further and further until there are no loopholes remaining. So the situation is far from hopeless. This is a challenge that CAN be solved.

As far as competitive balance goes, neither the last CBA nor the next one guarantees a level playing field. Quite the contrary, by setting the cap floor substantially below the maximum cap, it's clear that they didn't expect every team to be able to spend to the cap or anywhere close to the cap. I think, as a general matter, we have to accept that poor teams are more likely to struggle to achieve or maintain competitiveness. It's a simple truism. Even if the latest offer from the league was fully accepted by the NHLPA, this imbalance would still exist, only to a lesser degree. What the league seems to be saying, though, is that given the systemic imbalance in favor of richer teams, the last thing poorer teams need to contend with are these wonderfully abusive techniques to circumvent the salary cap as well. On that point, I'd agree with them. Richer teams are already outspending their poorer counterparts; why continue to sanction a loophole that gives them an even greater advantage?

Originally Posted by AWL

Let's take a step back to view things more broadly.

The last CBA was a grand experiment. No other sports league had ever utilized a salary cap quite like the NHL's, so it's not as though the two sides agreed to a time-tested model, the consequences of which should have been easily predictable. In many ways, it turned out to be anything but predictable. But over the course of the last 7 years, we've learned a lot about how the salary cap works and how it doesn't work. This time around, they'll try to put those lessons to use, as evidenced by the owners' proposals to date. Those proposals address all of the most popular ways to circumvent the cap, such as very long contracts with massive front-loading, back-diving or both, burying players in the minors, etc. Creative, to be sure, but there were only ever a few methods devised. Once these methods are entirely eliminated, of course, we still can't definitively rule out other creative ways to circumvent the cap; what we can rule out, however, is the idea that there are endless ways to circumvent the cap and there always will be. So long as there aren't any major overhauls to the basic salary cap system, we should expect that even if loopholes still exist, the impact of these loopholes should be greatly reduced. Over time, we can expect the system to be refined further and further until there are no loopholes remaining. So the situation is far from hopeless. This is a challenge that CAN be solved.

As far as competitive balance goes, neither the last CBA nor the next one guarantees a level playing field. Quite the contrary, by setting the cap floor substantially below the maximum cap, it's clear that they didn't expect every team to be able to spend to the cap or anywhere close to the cap. I think, as a general matter, we have to accept that poor teams are more likely to struggle to achieve or maintain competitiveness. It's a simple truism. Even if the latest offer from the league was fully accepted by the NHLPA, this imbalance would still exist, only to a lesser degree. What the league seems to be saying, though, is that given the systemic imbalance in favor of richer teams, the last thing poorer teams need to contend with are these wonderfully abusive techniques to circumvent the salary cap as well. On that point, I'd agree with them. Richer teams are already outspending their poorer counterparts; why continue to sanction a loophole that gives them an even greater advantage?

Yup, We the people are screwed but so are the players and owners.