i thnk we do need a another work stopage, just to get rid of bettman and his enron accounting

If Chelios is busy playing hockey and running restaurants, where is he supposed to find the time to control the players’ association? He needs to sleep sometime.

how about we talk about the season, vs. 2 seasons from now… you wonder why the NHL cant get any momentum. too many people trying to fix it or complain about instead of living and breathing it…

Relax, folks. Despite Stan’s best efforts to scare fans (and perhaps, as one of the NHL’s head media cheerleaders, to sabre-rattle a little at the players?), the players aren’t going to re-open CBA talks in two years time.

Stan’s overlooking one simple fact: the players don’t have the stomach for another lengthy round of potentially contentious and season-threatening labour talks. Not when this CBA is working out far better for the players than Fischler and other media sycophants of Gary Bettman and the team owners reported over two years ago.

It really doesn’t matter who the new head of the NHLPA is, they’re not going to have majority support from the PA membership to re-open talks with the league in two years time.

Man, can’t somebody take Stan behind the shed already?

Oh, for Gordie Howe’s sake…

If you want, Baroque, I’ll find some time to type out the article the Hockey News season preview had about Cheli--he says he gets 3-4 hours of sleep a night and does fine with that.  The man runs two restaurants which he visits on an almost daily basis, one of his kids is in Cedar Rapids, IA playing hockey, he’s got two teenage daughters and a teenage son, he’s a very active participant in the PA’s search for a successor to Saskin and goes to Toronto relatively regularly, from what I understand, to attend meetings on the matter, he’ll stay active in the PA to keep it honest, and he also seems to play professional hockey pretty darn well for the Red Wings…

I just don’t quite get the media whine.  Sure, Fischler, LeBrun, and the rest of Bettman’s Buddies (let’s face it, if the league has a ‘thought balloon’ about bans on head shots, bigger nets, etc., they’re floated to LeBrun as he preaches the league’s message), Dupont, Cox, Ken Campbell, et. al. are voicing Chairman Mao’s concerns--namely that the PA is no longer in lock-step with the league, that Bettman’s worried that they’ll pick an adversarial and/or confrontational leader in an attempt to continue to declare their independence, and there is an EXTREME dissatisfaction on the league’s part with the concept of the PA acting as a representative democracy instead of a representative republic as they feel that an executive director is the best way by which to do business (Bettman and Daly don’t believe that the PA can do business in an expedient member with 30 player reps voting on every decision)--but all this “They’re going to force another lockout!” business is a way to express this dissatisfaction indirectly, and, moreover, to pin blame for any dissent among the owners on concern about those dirty players.

Fischler of all people has been banging the “Oh, NO, the PA will have another strike” (note the use of the Bettman-coined “work stoppage” to deny that the owners locked the players out) particularly harshly since rumblings of the Rangers’ lawsuit against the NHL started being heard.  As there are still genuine concerns about the economic viability of several sun-belt franchises (think Atlanta, Florida, Phoenix), worries about the ownership situations in Tampa Bay and Nashville (and many questions about Bettman’s semi-legal meddling with the Predators’ sale and/or bending bylaws into pretzels to avoid examining the legality of the league’s consitution), and, as the Canadian dollar surges, dissent from the league’s bigger-market and bigger-revenue-generating clubs, who are tired of being told to support struggling franchises while, as the Rangers’ lawsuit is bringing to light, finding out that the league’s promises regarding generating revenue for the rest of the league via digital rights management and a Bettman’s “big picture” broadcasting forecast are empty as can be.

There are real issues here, and in the PA’s case, the added concern for the league is that the NHLPA will pick an agent to lead them, which would crate an even bigger power base for the cadre of Super-Agents who are earning record paycheques for their clients (never mind that GM’s and owners are the ones who write those cheques), giving them more leverage into the governance of the game…

But the PA isn’t going to pick an agent--all indications suggest that they won’t even go with a “hockey guy,” but with somebody who has a history in labour negotiations from either another sport or from the private sector--nor will they, at the present moment, seek to renegotiate the CBA, despite their concerns about the fact that the league’s GM’s and ownership, it could be argued, might be encouraged to use the “cost certainty” element of the CBA to overspend to the point that their overruns are covered by cutting into the “players’ share,” as they did via spending somewhere north of 58% of revenues on player salaries during 06-07 thanks to waiving high-priced players and exploiting the LTI to its maximum.

The fact of the matter is that the PA needs to generate some positive momentum for itself and reorganize itself to not only govern itself by its members in a speedy fashion, but also make the taxing job of a player rep a little more appealing via field rep assistance and some sort of stipend, and yes, the PA wants to flex its muscles by showing that it can have someone with a strong labour relations background take the helm thereof, but it’s just not the time to re-open the CBA.  Their next director will be charged with preparing for when the CBA really does expire, because it’s all but certain at this point that so-called player greed will be used as leverage for a potential third lockout on the owners’ part…

But while all of these issues, on both the owners’ and players’ sides, merit measured discussion and thoughtful debate, it’s much, much easier to throw up the red flag that is, “THE NEXT PA DIRECTOR WILL BE BOB GOODENOW II BECAUSE CHRIS CHELIOS IS THE DEVIL!” instead of actually talking about what ails the league, and, perhaps moreover, what’s going well, which is something hockey writers almost never talk about. 

There’s a lot of stuff to discuss this season, but, especially in light of the Rangers’ lawsuit against the NHL, Fischler, who happens to be employed by the Rangers’ parent club, is doing what he does to remind the hockey world that he marches to Mao Bettman’s drum.

George:

I can believe that Chelios gets by on only 3-4 hours of sleep a night (especially since as we get older, we need less sleep) or that he is involved in the association--I was just noticing that if Chelios is as bent on controlling the PA as much as some think, he would have to spend every waking hour of the day plotting and scheming and conniving to destroy the owners...destroy them!  Bwahahahaha!

He has other stuff to do, and I get tired of the obsession with the “Chelios militants will destroy the league in a few years” storyline...but I like how you put it

“THE NEXT PA DIRECTOR WILL BE BOB GOODENOW II BECAUSE CHRIS CHELIOS IS THE DEVIL!”

better. 

Excellent analysis of the situation as usual, George. I agree, whoever takes over as the PA’s new executive director will have their hands full re-organizing the PA as per their new constitution, not to mention getting the feel for the new job and the lay of the land in terms of future negotiations with the league.

My point remains that the majority of the players simply don’t have the stomach to face another round of labour negotiations scarcely four years after this CBA was implemented. Time heals all wounds but not enough time will have passed for the players to return to the bargaining table, and as we’ve seen thus far, escrow isn’t the boogeyman that it was made out to be, and considering salaries are as high now as they were in 2003-04, and will be even higher by 2009, the players have more than enough money to cover their escrow payments and still make a good living.

As David Shoalts of the Globe and Mail recently observed, there’s not a lot of militancy to be found in a union where the lowest salary is $475,000. He also could’ve added that a consistently rising salary cap also dampens any militancy.

Bottom line: the PA won’t be reopening labour talks in 2009. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me at all in 2011 if the players exercise their option to extend the current deal by one more season.

Stan has been out of the loop so lon he is starting to write about his wet dreams.