Donald Fehr's 21 months as NHL Players' Association executive director has taught him that NHL owners don't want to play ball with him any more than major league baseball owners did in the early years.
"I think baseball owners now have a different perspective than hockey owners now," Fehr told USA TODAY Sports on Monday. "But if you want to look at in comparison to baseball owners a couple of decades ago, when we were dealing with collusion and so, it might be more similar. But I don't treat that as a major issue."
Fehr, who spent 24 years as the MLB Players Association executive director, is far more concerned about the NHL's desire to reduce players' share of revenue, which has prompted the league to lock out players for the third time in 18 years.
This is the second day of the lockout, and there have been no formal talks since last Wednesday.
"You do try to see it from both sides," Fehr said. "You do try to put yourself in the other guy's place and then try to think what's an appropriate deal from their side as opposed to what their wish list is. Those are meaningfully different things."
The NHL's main financial objective from the beginning has appeared to be to push players into a revenue split close to 50-50, down from the current 57%. In the owners' first proposal, players were offered 43%. In the latest proposal, the owners have offered a six-year deal that starts with players receiving 49% and ends with them getting 47%. Commissioner Gary Bettman said he made that offer to prompt negotiations, but said it was off the table when the lockout began.
"What has puzzled me about this negotiation from the beginning," Fehr said, "is when you look at their original proposal it was essentially to say we know players made enormous concessions last time, billions of dollars over the life of the agreement, and then they say we still have some trouble. Then they say everything is perfect except for the players' share numbers and those two don't go together."
The NHL has pointed to the NBA and NFL reducing players' share in making their case for NHL players to do likewise.
"And given what happened in football and basketball, (NHL owners) decided the appropriate thing to do was ask for a much bigger salary reduction that what we saw the last time, coupled with the elimination or drastic reduction of virtually all of the player individual contract negotiation rights, which were part of the trade off concessions made last time," Fehr said. "If your goal is make an agreement, it's pretty hard to get there when you start off that way."
Responded deputy commissioner Bill Daly in an email: "I never downplay or understate the sacrifice and concessions players made in 2004-05, but I don't know what that has to do with this negotiation. It should be in everyone's interest to have a system that is fair and promotes the continued growth and success of the industry -- for the mutual benefit of players, clubs and fans. Fifty-seven percent is too much, and it has probably always been too much."
The union has offered to take a 2% raise (followed by raises of 4% and 6%), which players said would save $465 million based on the current growth rate of 7.1%. Players want the league to convert that savings into the creation of a fund to help struggling teams.
"It was fine as an original proposal," Daly said. "It seemed to recognize there are issues that need to be addressed and it attempted to move (toward) addressing them. But they clearly overvalued and overstated the real extent of the relief the proposal would have provided. The proposal still contemplated players' share continuing to increase on a year-to-year basis over a number of years, including probably beyond what our real growth might be, particularly in the third year. More distressing than all of that, is the fact that they made that proposal more than a month ago, and haven't moved since."
Fehr didn't expect to be returning to the bargaining table when he retired from the MLBPA in 2009. But he agreed to serve as an adviser to the NHLPA in its search for a new executive director. He was voted in as executive director in December 2010.
Players say he has had a dramatic impact in reorganizing the NHLPA that seemed in disarray after Ted Saskin and Paul Kelly both were forced out as executive directors.
"Don is very calm and collected and does a great job of explaining things," said Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller. "I think it's even helped with the fans and media. (They) are getting a lot of information that (in the last lockout) was very clouded. He understands the value of information."
In the last lockout, combative Bob Goodenow was the NHLPA executive director.
"Bob could be a bully sometimes, even with players who are constituents," said player agent Steve Bartlett. "And you would never see that with Fehr. ... He has won the players over."
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