On Feb. 16, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman put the organization in the history books in the worst possible way. The NHL became the first professional sports league to cancel an entire season due to a labor dispute.
This was hardly a shock to sports fans. Hockey fans were hearing that a work stoppage was likely as far back as last year's playoffs, and some NHL players who have been interviewed on ESPN say they saw this coming for a few years in advance. However, it is clear that the cancellation was entirely preventable. All week, the buzz has been about who is to blame, with a seemingly equal-sized camp each saying the other side (owners or players) are to blame. The answer is simple: Both sides should have done better in the negotiations and everyone is to blame.
For those who haven't been keeping track, the NHL's collective bargaining agreement expired at the end of the 2003-04 season, which means a new one needed to be worked out. There were two major hurdles with this negotiation --- a salary cap to limit spending and linkage. Linkage would link player salaries to the amount of revenue a team brought in. The owners were in favor of both of these policies, while the players were against both.
For months neither side really did anything. The players shocked everyone in December by saying they would accept a 24 percent rollback in salary, although they held firm on other demands. However, this was all but ignored by the owners. Both sides were far too stubborn to give anything up. It is this long time period that seems hard to believe in retrospect. Even though the players said they would never accept a salary cap, and even though the owners had said they would never give up linkage, both of those "hard-ass" plays suddenly came crashing down in the last couple of weeks.
Out of nowhere, the owners said they would give up their linkage demand. A couple of days later, the players' union said they'd accept a salary cap. Unfortunately, by this point there were only a couple of days left until the deadline to save the season, set by Bettman himself. My question is, where was this sudden desire to work together a few months ago, when there was still a season to save?
In the end, a difference of $6.5 million in the proposed cap figures is what ended the season. Pardon the Interruption's Tony Kornheiser posed the fans' question best when he rhetorically asked the players, "Which would you rather have, 100 percent of $42.5 million or 0 percent of $49 million?"
A sad postscript was added to this story last weekend, as the NHL and the player's association had seemingly come up with an agreement to un-cancel the season on Friday night, according to a news leak. However, as it so often does, the NHL let their fans down, as no such agreement was imminent. There will be no Stanley Cup awarded for the first time since 1919. Everyone associated with the league should be embarrassed, because as usual, the only people who will suffer for the greed in sports will be the fans.
Write to Andy at ndistops@hotmail.com
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