NHL teams posted record losses of nearly $300 million last season
NHL owners are once again about to plead poverty, when in reality their own competitiveness and lack of self-control are primarily to blame. Then again, the Lords of the NHL have never been renowned for being an overly introspective lot.
NEW YORK -- NHL teams posted record losses of nearly $300 million last season, according to figures distributed to owners this summer.
That was an increase of 35 percent from the $218 million in operating losses incurred by the league last year.
The losses are blamed on soaring player salaries. Without a salary cap, the NHL spent 76 percent of $1.93 billion in revenue on players salaries and benefits. That is a greater percentage than in the NBA, NFL or major league baseball.
"This is a level at which no business can survive," Bill Daly, the NHL's chief legal officer, told The Wall Street Journal in an article about league finances. "The league will lose teams and players will lose jobs if we can't fix this."
The NHL would not comment further to The Associated Press.
The league will seek what commissioner Gary Bettman calls "cost certainty," in bargaining a new collective agreement with its players association. The current deal expires in September 2004 and there are expectations that negotiations will be stormy, possibly resulting in a strike or lockout.
The NHL locked out players for 103 days in 1994 and reportedly has assembled a $300 million war chest as it prepares for contract talks.
"Cost certainty"?? How about "Spending certainty"?? No one is pointing guns at the heads of owners and forcing them to empty their wallets. When you pay $3 million a year to a third-line defenseman, can you credibly claim to be surprised that your team, which is after all still a business, is operating in the red?
Players are simply taking advantage of the marketplace that has been created by owners. If owners want to create a degree of "cost certainty", they have it within their power to do so. As owners, they control the purse strings. If a player demands more than an owner feels is reasonable or prudent, then let that player hold out. Perhaps it will take a few players holding out for most or all of a season for the NHLPA to realize that things have changed.
Memo to NHL owners: if you do not have the cojones to enforce some spending restraints upon yourselves, you cannot reasonably expect the players to shoulder that burden. Wake up and smell the cat litter, willya? You're all successful businessmen. Perhaps it's time y'all starting acting like it.
