The NHL lockout has lasted more than a month and a key Thursday deadline looms for the league to hold a full season. What needs to happen for the lockout to end?
1. Individual contracts have to be honored
Players are more unified on this issue than they were about preventing a salary cap in 2004-05. It has become a rallying cry, a symbol of solidarity, and owners have no one to blame but themselves. Teams were way too eager to sign players to long-term deals this summer (such as the 13-year, $98 million deals to new Minnesota Wild teammates Zach Parise and Ryan Suter), and now the impression is that they signed those players believing the deals would be reduced by the new labor agreement. Does that seem like good-faith bargaining? Any new collective bargaining agreement will have to include real protection for those contracts. That means it will have to have minimal salary rollback in the first couple of seasons.
2. Deal has to end with a true 50-50 split
That has been the owners' objective from the beginning, and there will have to be an absolute in at least the final two years of the deal. Players are offering legitimate concessions, but they are still dancing around the 50-50 number without embracing it. Owners will want a hard 50-50 number at the end, and not an "if-then" proposal.
3. Players need to win on vast majority of secondary issues
When you are asking players for more than $1 billion in concessions, you can't also ask them to accept a longer wait for free agency, reduced arbitration rights or more restrictive individual contract conditions. With a salary cap and a 50-50 split, why do owners need a more restrictive player environment?
4. Stop trying to win public relations war
The PR war is over and both sides lost. Fans are generally blaming both sides for the lack of progress, and it will be a PR disaster for both sides if there is no season. Let's just stipulate that players are mad at Commissioner Gary Bettman and believe this is a money grab, and then let's stipulate that owners are miffed because they believe players are making proposals with a theme they know owners won't accept. Nobody wins the blame game, except the journalists who write about it.
5. The stars must be stars
Bettman and NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr are highly experienced at high-level negotiations, and they need to get in a room and talk in practical terms about an end game to this lockout. Straight talk. No spin. No news conferences afterward. It's really a misnomer to suggest that the two sides have been engaged in negotiations. There has been almost no negotiating. It's like having Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin on the bench, and neither is playing.
6. Players need to embrace practicality instead of principle
What you hear around the hockey world is both sides believe this will end in November and the season will start after Thanksgiving. With that scenario, players would lose about five weeks (roughly 19.2%) of their pay, a bigger cut than the NHL is seeking with a drop in the players' share was trying to take from them in the demand that players share drop from 57% to 50%. Players seem to believe that has been the owners' plan all along to squeeze them as much as they could until then. If players believe that, they should make another offer this week with the idea of giving to give themselves a chance to play a full season and not miss any paycheck? Some modest movement in years three and four might be enough to prevent lost paychecks. Is there really principle involved when you are dividing up $3.3 billion? Or is simply a matter of getting as many dollars as you can?
7. Owners must accept this isn't 2004-05
Fehr has done a masterful job of unifying his group. He is a skilled communicator, and players say they are much better informed than they were the last time around. Owners can't target the NHLPA's No. 2 man either because the job is held by Fehr's brother, Steve, who is highly experienced in his own right. Plus, he seems to be the likely successor when Fehr retires. The NHL won't wear down this group.
8. Stop playing serve-and-volley on proposals
Does it matter whose turn it is to make a proposal? Instead of worrying about who blinked first, or if they look weak by making two proposals in a row, let's concentrate simply on getting a proposal. They have to get in a room this week and make a painful effort to reach a deal that will allow a full season to be played. Both sides would have to feel some pain to make this compromise work. It might help if they simply talk about the $1.65 billion they are arguing instead of percentages, and then work back from the money to the percentages.
9. Outside pressures needed
How about NBC reminding the NHL how committed it has been to giving the league first-class treatment? The NBC Sports Network clearly counts on the league for programming, and it can't be pleased by this turn of events. Presumably, NBC also isn't happy that the NHL is considering canceling the Winter Classic in Ann Arbor, Mich. That should draw high ratings as people tune in to see if 120,000 fans come to the Big House to watch outdoor hockey.
10. View a lost season as Armageddon
Although the league continued to prosper after the last lockout, there is no guarantee that will happen again. In fact, it is plausible that some fans won't return. In the last lockout, most fans accepted the need for a lockout to bring about a salary cap that would allow competitive balance. Most fans view this fight as simply a battle over dollars. There seems to be a chance that an extended lockout would do damage to the sport.
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