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2012 CBA Negotiations Thread

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Nik V. Debs said:
As always though there shouldn't be too much read into what gets said publicly. What's off the table today could be back on it tomorrow.
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It's hyperbole, for sure. What it really means is these aspects aren't going to get much better than what's on the table right now.
 
My interest in this whole thing is definitely waning.  I think given my previous watching patterns that I probably go right back to watching NHL hockey but I'm really having a hard time understand Bettman's rationale on this whole negotiating thing. 
 
L K said:
My interest in this whole thing is definitely waning.  I think given my previous watching patterns that I probably go right back to watching NHL hockey but I'm really having a hard time understand Bettman's rationale on this whole negotiating thing.
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For what it's worth, Bettman wasn't in the room for any of the discussions that took place this week - including today.
 
bustaheims said:
L K said:
My interest in this whole thing is definitely waning.  I think given my previous watching patterns that I probably go right back to watching NHL hockey but I'm really having a hard time understand Bettman's rationale on this whole negotiating thing.
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For what it's worth, Bettman wasn't in the room for any of the discussions that took place this week - including today.
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It's not like anyone could make a call without him being involved though, so yes, essentially, he was in the room.
 
OldTimeHockey said:
It's not like anyone could make a call without him being involved though, so yes, essentially, he was in the room.
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Daly absolutely has the authority to say no to things he knows aren't acceptable to the BoG. It would be difficult to accept a deal without Bettman (but not impossible), but, to reject one . . . not so much.
 
Potvin29 said:
I thought Bettman was in another room and the NHL side was going back and forth all day?
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I'm not sure about that. He wasn't in the room where they were negotiating with the PA, and there wasn't a lot of face to face meetings before 5, based on what I've read.
 
Remember being a kid when the biggest problem was who was going to be Sittler when you're playing road hockey.  I'll never forgive this lock-out.
 
The posturing is getting more and more grandiose. Both sides will now go back to their members and cooler heads will prevail. I still see this thing getting done. Way too much time to pull the plug just yet. Could Gretzky be right with his Jan 1st prediction? Was that a settlement date or a start up date?

 
That Bettman presser is a great example of how so many players dislike him - he's acting emotional and taking it personal with Fehr.

Daly said the league had three unbreakable conditions to a deal: a five-year cap on contracts with only 5% variance between the highest and lowest yearly salaries (seven if you are re-signing with the same team), a 10-year CBA, and no limits on things like escrow, calling them ?the hill we will die on.? The players had offered eight-year maximums with 25% variance, and an eight-year CBA with an opt-out after six, and limits on escrow, and so-called compliance buyouts, which takes money off the cap. Some hill.

It was a farce. The owners have crushed them. They have gotten players to agree to a 50-50 split of revenues from 57-43, plus US$300-million in payments to honour parts of existing contracts which would be rolled back, though US$50-million of that is players paying their own pensions. They have pushed the length of the collective bargaining agreement, no matter what, and have put limits on contract lengths. They have held steady on arbitration, and age of unrestricted free agency. It is a rout. All that?s left is finding out how much of a rout it is.

Still, they were not so far apart. The gap was steadily narrowing, and none of this was the kind of thing that should threaten a season. Bettman?s righteous anger kept unspooling, but this felt like NHL and the Proskauer Rose LLP playbook.

This time they are coming for everything they can get. They are pushing the boot down on the PA?s throat, which keeps trying to move under their feet.

And they are making it about Fehr, who has stubbornly refused to negotiate off their proposals.

On Wednesday night one owner banged on the door and tried to pull players out of the room, apparently in order to isolate them; Winnipeg defenceman Ron Hainsey said someone from the ownership side told players Wednesday night that bringing Fehr back into the room ?could be a dealbreaker.?

One player told Adrian Dater of The Denver Post that Fehr encouraged players not to take the deal offered during owner-player meetings Wednesday night, saying they could get more; if so, then Fehr was basically doing the job the players hired him to do. Clearly both sides are to blame for the breakdown of the process, but only one of them is trying to do anything other than win on what are clearly their own terms. The NHL talks about giving, but the league isn?t the one that?s going to be relatively poorer to start the next CBA.
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Full Article

The owners don't appear to want a fair deal, they want their big concessions, and their cake, too.  Is it any wonder they keep having lockouts?
 
Andy007 said:
Nik V. Debs said:
lc9 said:
Hopefully this is a pill the players can swallow.  As a fan, I love the idea of shorter contracts.
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Honestly, the limiting of contract lengths just strikes me as a bone to throw to stupid GM's who don't know how to manage a club.
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And that is just one of the reasons why this lockout is so frustrating. The limiting of contract length is apparently non-negotiable as far as the league is concerned. Really? Your team has a problem with long-term contracts? Simple answer: DON'T SIGN THEM!
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It is not that simple.  The fact that owners want contract length limits does not make them dumb.  The fact that GMs both sign long-term contracts and also want a CBA that prohibits long-term contracts does not make them dumb or inconsistent or irrational or "unable to control themselves when they should know better".

The Weber situation is an illustrative example.  Philly tried to squeeze Nashville by giving Weber a massive, front loaded deal.  The cap hit was not the problem; it was the distribution of funds. Moreover, Nashville incurs risk from the long contract, which effectively means that the weber deal costs them even more than it appears.  Despite the cost, many reasonable people would argue accepting the contract is not dumb -- weber's talent (and popularity) was worth it.  Likewise, many reasonable people would argue philly was not dumb for offering the contract -- philly would get better if they had received weber. So neither Philly nor Nashville were dumb in my opinion (one can argue about the exact value of weber, but the parties involved are acting rationally).  Even more importantly, if Philly doesn't offer weber the contract becaus they want to play nice and don't want to jack up webers cost then they are, in principle, breaking the law -- they are colluding.

However, in a setting where there are no long contracts and there is a cap, Weber just can't cost as much as he wound up costing Nashville.  So, by shortening the allowed contract length, the NHL is changing the market for players -- they are artificially reducing the cost of certain players (a few of the highest end players).  It is not at all stupid for them to do that. 

Having said that, I don't want this post to be interpreted as supporting the owners.  I just wanted to explain why their bargaining demands in this instance are rational as opposed stupid/inconsistent/undisciplined nonsense. I don't support either side. I just want hockey. 
 
princedpw said:
It is not that simple.  The fact that owners want contract length limits does not make them dumb.  The fact that GMs both sign long-term contracts and also want a CBA that prohibits long-term contracts does not make them dumb or inconsistent or irrational or "unable to control themselves when they should know better".

The Weber situation is an illustrative example.  Philly tried to squeeze Nashville by giving Weber a massive, front loaded deal.  The cap hit was not the problem; it was the distribution of funds.
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I think this right here is where you should have stopped because you seem to be addressing a completely different issue. Like you say, the Weber deal was one where the primary issue from Nashville's perspective was the huge whack of upfront money not contract length. You can eliminate frontloaded deals without implementing a maximum length on contracts, as the NHL is also trying to do, by severely restricting the yearly variance on a long term deal. None of the people you quoted above said anything about that.

princedpw said:
Moreover, Nashville incurs risk from the long contract, which effectively means that the weber deal costs them even more than it appears.  Despite the cost, many reasonable people would argue accepting the contract is not dumb -- weber's talent (and popularity) was worth it. Likewise, many reasonable people would argue philly was not dumb for offering the contract -- philly would get better if they had received weber.
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Right. Nobody would argue that either Philly or Nashville were dumb because most people would argue that Weber is, even with the big contract he got, worth it.

However, that said, Weber's deal is risky. However that risk is balanced by the presence of some reward. Not only will Nashville have years on the back end where they're paying Weber significantly less than his cap hit which could represent some serious financial benefits but there also exists the possibility as the years go on and the cap grows that Weber will be locked in to a yearly cap hit that would be significantly lower than his market value. Weber's long term deal probably means he'll miss out on testing the market for the rest of his career.

So what I was saying, primarily, is that by not letting teams decide for themselves what players are worth locking up in long term deals that buys future years at current market prices teams are essentially taking away options available to smart GM's to build for the future and manage the cap wisely. Does it eliminate some risk as well? Sure but by coming down on the side of eliminating risk the league is casting in their lot with the GM's who would make the bad decisions about who to lock in to these kinds of deals.

princedpw said:
Even more importantly, if Philly doesn't offer weber the contract becaus they want to play nice and don't want to jack up webers cost then they are, in principle, breaking the law -- they are colluding.
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Well, this just isn't true. Each and every team is allowed to decide for themselves what deals they offer based on how they would affect the market because they're also beholden to the market. Philly is even allowed to decide not to try and sign free agents just to be nice.

A charge of collusion, in an actionable sense, actually does require teams to act in concert. A team can't collude by itself. Brian Burke wasn't mad at Kevin Lowe because he thought Kevin Lowe broke an agreement they had, Brian Burke was mad at Kevin Lowe because he thought Kevin Lowe was doing something that was bad for the league. Nobody, though, said that Kevin Lowe was obligated to offer Dustin Penner what he did or else face charges of collusion.

princedpw said:
However, in a setting where there are no long contracts and there is a cap, Weber just can't cost as much as he wound up costing Nashville.  So, by shortening the allowed contract length, the NHL is changing the market for players -- they are artificially reducing the cost of certain players (a few of the highest end players).  It is not at all stupid for them to do that. 
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I don't think that's really true either. Take the Parise deal. Parise signed a 13 year contract worth 98 million dollars. If Parise had signed, say, a five year 50 million dollar deal, which he very possibly could have gotten, he still could cost more than 48 million dollars over the remaining 8 years of his career. As I said above, limiting a contract's length mitigates the risk of a long-term deal but it doesn't necessarily make a player cheaper.

That said, I agree that it's not stupid for the league to want to artificially limit player costs. I think it's greedy, I think it's indefensible from a perspective of fairness, but it's not stupid. It fundamentally makes sense for the NHL to want to pay players as little as possible.

That said, it's a fundamentally different discussion than limiting the sorts of contracts GM's are allowed to offer. If you look at what the NHL is insisting upon it's not just Shea Weber's deal they wouldn't allow, it's Seguin's, it's Crosby's. It's Mike Richards' and James Van Riemsdyk's. Smart teams can use long term deals to lock up young players to deals that buy up years of their free agency at reduced prices. The NHL should be encouraging that.

The best way to see an example of what is being said here is to look at other sports. Baseball is the sport with the fewest restrictions on what a team can offer a player. Basketball is the sport with the most. In Baseball, books and movies are made about how smart GM's can use the freedom available to them to their advantage. In Basketball, people are constantly complaining about how much power individual players have. Baseball has had 19 different champions in the last 30 years. Basketball has had 9.

If a league wanted to put the intelligence of executives at a premium over the decisions of free agents in terms of dictating champions, Baseball's model is the route to take, not Basketball.
 
I really think Fehr is current problem. Fire Him and get rid of Bettman's style of dication negotiation is wrong. Get rid of him as well.
 
Hampreacher said:
I really think Fehr is current problem. Fire Him and get rid of Bettman's style of dication negotiation is wrong. Get rid of him as well.
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It's interesting that things were all rosy and optimistic this week until they brought Bettman and Fehr back to the table. Then things fell apart. Their disdain for each other is so strong that it's holding up the process of getting a deal done.
 
Hampreacher said:
I really think Fehr is current problem. Fire Him and get rid of Bettman's style of dication negotiation is wrong. Get rid of him as well.
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Fehr isn't a problem for the players. He's the problem for the owners because he's good at his job. This thing would have been settled on Wednesday if not for Fehrs insistence to hold out a bit longer. Can anyone besides the owners blame him for this? He's trying to get the best deal he can for the players. It's too bad Bettman and the owners are getting frustrated with him, but if not for Fehr, they'd be squeezing the players for anything and everything they could get, and they'd be rolling the Fehr brothers for spare change to boot.
 
Apparently Hainsey stated that after the players said they were going to bring Fehr in, the NHL said "that could be a deal breaker"....Wow...atta negotiate NHL
 
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