O O Ø O O O O
Massive Victory
This past weekend the axe finally fell on the lockout-stricken 2004-05 NHL season. This was news I’d been waiting for–sometimes impatiently–since November. I’ve waited so long I’ve penned this rant three times, anticipating the season’s demise.
How did we get here? What was the cause? More pointedly, who’s to blame? Let’s break it down.
The players are not to blame. They’re talented and valuable, and fans willingly pay bucketfuls of money to watch them perform. I think an apology is almost necessary to the players, many of whom are truly victims in this mess, wanting nothing more than to play hockey and take home what people think they’re worth. Most have kept silent, even though the fans are demonizing them mercilessly. They’re in a rotten situation.
Player agents are, to some degree, to blame. They have mercilessly used league-wide comparables and salary arbitration to ratchet average salaries beyond the reach of most teams. Although teams never have to pay a player more than they want, they are constantly being held hostage by their young talent, which leads to pressure from the fans. Edmonton fans are intimately familiar with this. Think Doug Weight and Bill Guerin, to name only the most obvious. Calgary fans are in a similar boat. What choice did ownership have other than to dig deep and pay Jarome Iginla 13 million for his last two seasons, keeping him from bolting to richer clubs like Theoren Fleury, Joe Nieuwendyk, Al McInnis and Doug Gilmour had already done. Was letting Iginla go two years ago really an option? Is it an option now?
The NHLPA is, to some extent, to blame. Its leader, Bob Goodenow, is an intransigent negotiator who has always waited until the 11th hour before even starting to try to make a deal. This time, though, it blew up on him. What can he say at the next player meeting, other than “We’ll get ‘em next year.” If his job is to negotiate a contract for the players, what does it say about his ability to accomplish that when he tells the association to be prepared to sit out for two years? Goodenow has failed his charges.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is not to blame. Unlike Goodenow, Bettman is doing the job he has been paid to do, which is to negotiate cost certainty for his league’s franchises. He has been unfairly villified by players, media and fans. He has tripled league revenues since taking the commissioner’s job, but that hasn’t been enough to cover the uncontrolable escalation in salaries. The expansion into many of the league’s brutal new markets was already well under before he stepped onto the stage. Whatever the state of the league, it’s hardly his fault.
The fans are obviously not to blame. They’re a little hockey-starved right now, and too many of them were egging-on the owners to accept any sort of deal in order to preserve a 28-game season. As if saving a seriously truncated season and holding a Stanley Cup tournament were more important than saving the league. Silly fans. Silly Toronto-based fans.
Toronto is to blame. The Leafs, plus the other über-rich teams in the league. The Rangers, the Red Wings, the Avalanche, the Blues and the Stars have caused this entire mess by signing free agents at astronomical prices that none of the other teams could afford. Nine million for Bobby Holik, a twenty-goal, checking, second-line centre? That was the moment when most of the entire league realized that changes were going to be necessary in the future, whatever the cost. This CBA is about about defending small market teams from the predatory signing tactics of the major markets. Gary Bettman proved that beyond any doubt when he refused to move from his final fixed-cap position of $42.5 million per team, despite the protestations of the large markets that (reasonably, prudently) wanted to play hockey this year, with just about any negotiated deal.
The other owners–the small market ones–are not to blame. They’re the hawks in this process, and they’re the ones who are giving Bettman the clout to play hardball with the PA. They’re the ones who are saving hockey from itself. (Okay, maybe they are directly to blame for no hockey this year, but they can’t be expected to support their teams as hobbies forever.)
We all know that hockey rates poorly on American TV networks, during those fleeting occassions when it’s shown at all. With a new CBA suppressing salaries, we no longer have to care that hockey scores lower on the Nielson scale than pinochle. The NHL can forget about some pie-in-the-sky national American TV contract, the pre-requisite to keep hockey players paid as much as footballers. From here out it’ll be local broadcasts, local sponsors, and local fans. Hey Canada, we can have our league back!
Remember when eight of the league’s 21 teams were Canadian? Remember when the other 13 teams were all located in markets that cared about hockey? (Except for maybe L.A., but out of respect for Marcel Dione, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.) We are on the verge of having that super-relevant league again. No, Winnipeg isn’t going to get the Jets back, but I guarantee the next team to relocate won’t be Canadian. Butts-in-seats will be the currency of the new cult-following NHL, and that’s a curency both Calgary and Edmonton can trade.
Here’s the view from my perverse Calgary-centric hockey world: every time I hear some piece of bad news about league revenues–like ESPN dropping hockey coverage altogether–I’m uplifted. The longer this lockout continues, and the more marginalized the sport becomes in America, the larger the local Canadian markets will seem in comparison. Folks, the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, by virtue of their seat-buying fan bases and local television contracts, are becoming larger fish in a shrinking pond.
If we find ourselves in the same position next year at this time, with a season hanging in the balance at the price of another bad NHLPA offer, I’ll be cheering for the owners to gas that season too. If I never see Jarome Iginla (the greatest Flame ever) and Miika Kiprusoff (the best goalie anywhere right now) play another game, then fine. I’ll be saddened, but resolute. I mean no disrespect, but my goal is ultimately to chear for the Calgary Flames’ laundry for the rest of my life, not just the two superstars wearing it right now.
I’m not precisely sure what the endgame is to this labour dispute, but I’m pretty sure it resembles complete player capitulation. When that happens, I’ll be down on the Red Mile celebrating. Not just because hockey will be back, but because it will be back for good.
Flames-for-goddamn-ever.
Evan Spence
February 22, 2005
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