Time for all involved to stop playing games
Union: Proposal would produce $275.5M profit
‘I’m getting tired of watching reruns of our games’
Here’s the maddening part: These sides are, on some levels, not so far apart. Indeed, in real dollars, perilously close to striking a deal. So close that if this season goes for naught and, by extension, the start of next season and beyond, history will judge this to be the most absurd labor dispute of all time. You were how close and couldn’t get it right?
- Scott Burnside
Evil Incarnate and his sidekick
Isn’t it about time that someone whip out a ruler so Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow can find settle the argument of whose is bigger? (Yeah, I know; the last time I saw somthing that tiny, it had an eraser on the end of it. Work with me here.) The NHL lockout has now exited the realm of the ridiculous only to find itself in the domain of the sublime.
Someone help me here…what IS this argument about, anyway? It seems to me that, if the parties involved were serious about settling this, they be involved in some actual, honest-to-God negotiations. DO the owners and the NHLPA even WANT a settlement, or are both sides willing to trash the 2004-05 season merely so they can stand on what they view as “principle”?
The players have said that they will not accept a salary cap. The owners have said that they want cost certainty. While I’m going to have to side with the players on this one, there is a way for owners to have their cake and eat it to. If you want cost certainty, I have two very simple words to offer as advice: SELF CONTROL. If you want to control costs:
…stop paying third- and fourth-line middling talents multi-million dollar salaries. Your revenues simply cannot justify such profligate spending.
…refrain from engaging in bidding wars with each other.
…establish a payroll budget AND LIVE WITHIN YOUR MEANS. This should be a basic Business 101 lesson…unless you own an NHL team. No business can succeed if it cannot stick to a budget.
…if your star center holds out and demands a salary that you feel is unreasonable, stick to your guns. YOU control the purse-strings, eh? Cost certainty begins with the person you see in the mirror every morning.
…work with other owners to devise ways to achieve cost certainty that fall short of collusion. Be creative. You’re all successful businesspeople, eh?
…get a decent television contract. You cannot pay multimillion dollar, major-league salaries when you are saddle with a minor-league television deal. Or do you want people to confuse the NHL with the World Poker Tour?
The solutions are readily at hand and easily implementable- if only Bettman and Goodenow could turn down the testosterone. At this point, one could reasonably conclude that both sides are willing to kill the Golden Goose while assuming the carnage will save it. In the end, though, all we’re going to have on our hands is a dead goose. Anyone else hungry??
Game on? Apparently not in our lifetime….
