Hello out there hockey fans, and welcome to….. hold that thought. As the negotiations pretty much have yet to start with the NHL and Players Association’s CBA set to expire on September 15, the likeliness of a work stoppage is beginning to frustrate some hockey fans. Or perhaps the fans were already frustrated with the game and the idea of millionaire players battling billionaire owners.
CBA 2012: NHL vs NHLPA What the Fans are Saying
The following snippets are from various online sources and do not specifically express the views of The Hockey Fanatic. This is commentary from the mouths of hockey fans who have chosen to express their thoughts in various online forums. Here is what some of the hockey fans are saying about CBA, the NHL and the Players.
Discussions on Twitter… and in other forums, hockey fans are growing increasingly frustrated:
Re: Grange on CBA: Who will blink first?
Fehr wasn`t brought in by the players to do the same thing that Kelly did last time…Fehr for all intense and purpose made the MLB players union one the strongest if not strongest union in all the major sports leagues and got rid of the salary cap there…
Fehr knows Betteman doesn`t have a leg to stand on considering what the owners are doing behind his back. – Vader
Do these people no nothing about bargaining? If you cannot agree on on part you move on and settle what you can then work backwards to the tough parts. Sometimes once you get back to the tough parts there has been enough give and take that the tough parts are not so tough. If the NHL does get locked out I will cancel my tv sports package. Everyone should. Send them a message. – butcher_9
I don’t get his we have millionaire players fighting with billionaire owners- i was listening to prime time sports and someone called in and replied that they believe that no player is worth what they get??? Is Mr crosby worth $104million over 12 yrs, is Talor Hall worth 42million over 7rs all im saying is who determines what a player is worth. In the modern world of reality 101 people go to school to earn skills and trades to make a living and become productive citizens- are lawyers worth what they get $250/hr on average, Politicians, Doctors Police Officer or teachers- most people believe worth is dependant on education levels, its something to contemplate how much ayou worth. well for me i have a masters degree in chemistry- according to industry i should well over $120, 000 /yr but reality is my employer say differently. I said this that employers determine what your worth if taylor hall is worth 42million or crosby 104million the person who sign his check determines this–i blame this situation with the Nhl owners sorry? -halloffame
Geez what would this world be without all this BS and sides digging in….oh right utopia. Sadly greed creeps in and ruins it for the ones who are actually paying their wages – the fans. They keep talking about haggling over percentage of revenues in the future but what these tools don’t seem to realize is that they longer they drag this soap opera out the less that revenue becomes. Not to sound like a broken record but fans are the ones who keep getting the shaft over and over and over again as these little children flex their egos and puff out their chests. Time to seriously look at locking these twits in a room and throwing away the key until a deal can get done. Sad for us though that will never happen. Hopefully karma will one day bite these greedy people in the a$$…..it is one of the seven sins after all. – HurricaneOil
I am not sure the owners want an NHL as it exists, unless they do not understand the precarious position that many of the NHL teams are in at the moment. Another lock out, or time with no NHL will lose more fence-sitting fans, especially in the States. Owners are not afraid to promote and use players, but are not willing to really share the wealth that is really based on focusing on the real talent. – fredneck
I am pushing for the idea of everyone just dropping all their sports packages from TV. You have to hit someone and make it hurt. Mine will be gone as soon as the Grey Cup is over if there is no hockey. If 10,000 familys were to drop sportsnet over a couple days the pressure to settle would land on the owners shoulders pretty fast.
They gave the players an ultimatum we need to give the owners one back. Bettman promised lower ticket prices if there was a settlement last time. They have doubled since the last agreement in some cities. Today Bettman insults the fans by saying the owners are not worried. Hockey fans are such dolts they will just suck it up and come back as soon as there is a settlement. This dispute is just about the owners greed and their wanting to protect themselves not from the players high salaries, but from themselves. They are the ones making these silly deals. No team would ever make a 100 million dollar deal with someone if they had not talked to the owner first. Do I really care if Phoenix cannot compete with Vancouver or Boston? Well they compete just fine with toronto and they are not in a small market. It is not all salaries as the owners would have you believe. Send bettman a message. Not this time ****. You fooled us once, you will not do it again. – abutcher99
MLB makes 10 times the amount that the NHL makes. They play 81 home games compared to 41 in the NHL. They have a worldwide audience ( World Series money alone from TV rights all over the world is worth more than the entire NHL years TV revenue by LOTS!!!!!) I would honestly say Major league baseball revenue from everything is well over 1 billion annually per team and some way more than others. That is probably close to 40 billion a year. ( Rough guess), The NHL I think was 3 billion total last year. That is like comparing a grape with a watermelon. If Fehr thinks he is going to go the route of baseball, he had beter get some HUGE TV contracts around the world similar to that.
Football, Baseball and Basketball in the states make a ton of money, Hockey not so much. – Maclintock
People attack Bettman saying a lockout would risk a number of small US market-based teams, as if that’s a bad thing, or even something Bettman doesn’t want to happen. Why make that assumption? What if they actually want those teams to move, this time to money-making cities? A lockout absolves the league (no mea culpa here!) of the fallout. As for the owners losing their teams,well, they’re losing money right now, so selling might be a sound option — the only sound option in this financial climate. The south experiment is now sucking revenues from money-making teams, and maybe it’s starting to hurt, especially with the big-money contracts now in the mix. As for a team in Hamilton or Markham and the supposed opposition from the Leafs … well, that would be a bad business decision for them. Another team in the area won’t cut into Leafs revenue at all; but it will bring even more people to games in the region, and more corporate boxes, etc. Tack on revenue sharing and no-one loses, not the Leafs and not the Sabres. If my logic’s off here, someone tell me… – whenshe’sgone
Fools… So stupid and short-sighted to constantly be on the verge of a lockout! I blame Bettman and the owners more than the players, but the end result will be the same. We as fans are ultimately the losers. How can you build support and grow the league by constantly inturrupting the season every time?!? I still think Bettman should have ‘sucked it up’ and taken ESPN’s offer of less $ back in the day to continue the TV contract for the US! By deciding to go for a few dollars more (to jump to the OUTDOOR NETWORK, remember??), Bettman set the league back years if not decades. Now that the NHL was FINALLY gaining some momentum back, it will all be lost again because of ignorance and greed. It really is a shame. – lakingsfan1960
Whatever! I have always been excited to the start of a new season for the past 30 years of watching the NHL. Now I onestly don’t care! It is no longer a sport to watch with atheletes trying there best every night to keep there jobs and make the playoffs, instead it is how much can I get for the longest term possible with the least amount of effort. Hockey is now the worlds biggest sporting joke with owners signing players till there 60 for huge money and turning around and saying they are losing money? No shit! Parise and Sutter are great players but not $100,000,000 players. This is the problem. Is Mike Fisher worth $4.2m per season? Is Semin a $7m guy after back to back 50 point seasons? The answer is NO! But they get it anyway because owners are addicted to overspending and then complaining about what they got and what they paid. If you cannot afford to sing a certian player, don’t sign them! Contracts are way to long as we all no so no need to open that one up. I love watching the best players in the world every year but this time I hope we do lose a season because players and owners need to see that the world keeps on turning with or without this stupid money battle! – pdeleeuw
It’s not only the southern teams losing money in the current system; 17 teams lost money last season. It really isn’t hard to understand the stance the NHL is taking. These owners didn’t become billionaires by being bad businessmen. – alwillig
Wish my work week only consisted of an hr and a half meeting to decide what my next two hr work week was gonna entail.. must be nice to fight over millions and millions!! C’mon guys just get it done. – bizmo_1515
Why haven’t these meeting been going on for the past 12 months. Something as complicated as the NHL CBA, can’t be completed in 60-90 days. On a side note, I hear people saying that the two sides don’t know where to start in their talks. How about starting where any intelligent person would start. Pick one point, work on it, come to a solution. Then move on to the next point. And so on, and so on. That’s where you start. – mootz27
When are we the fans going to put our money where our mouths are if the lock out and comeback we should strike and stay away until the following year and maybe make both the owners and players think long and hard when the play to 30 empty rinks. I love the sport its my favourite but really we need to be the ones who decide not them. – timmdawg
Bring on the Scabs! – kinaschukI am afraid that the owners don’t have enough incentive to move quickly. Many franchises don’t make a profit on hockey operations (for example Tampa where I live.) They make a profit with concerts and other revenue streams from their building. So, if there is lockout, the owner is not losing money, he is actually saving money. That prevents many owners from having any real sense of urgency here I’m afraid. – coopdogus
The owners bought the team so they should get the profit. Players already make millions. If you buy something and it makes you money are you going to share it with other people, I don`t think so. – stainz67s
I’ve been combing the internets, trying to find the initial CBA proposals from the league, prior to the last lockout. Sadly, Al Gore didn’t build this thing properly, so I’m still searching. But from what I can gather, on July 21, 2004, the NHL proposed six different salary cap scenarios, and the NHLPA rejected each and every single one of them, stating they would never agree to a cap. A position they maintained for an entire year, flushing an entire year of their union brothers’ salaries down the toilet.
And then they caved, and signed (if I recall correctly) basically the exact same piece of paper that was shoved in front of them in September. The Wedgie proposal: NHLPA should act as tough as they can until September 14th, and then suck it up (buttercup), and sign the paper. – AtomicWedgie
Some other notable commentary from industry folks.
Corey Graham at the Team 1260: Bettman said owners are paying players more than they should be. Hmm, maybe the owners should stop offering huge contracts?
Mike Brophy at Sportsnet: Still trying to get my head around the players being told they earn too much money by the owners that sign them to their contracts.
@TH2NSTATSGUY – 1917-1993 – 0 NHL work stoppages…… 1993: Gary Bettman hired as commissioner…… 1993-2012 – 2, now likely 3 work stoppages.
Adam Proteau @Proteautype – Gary Bettman says the NHL has the world’s best fans, and I agree. Too bad those fans don’t have the world’s best owners.
Sources include:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl-lockout/2012/08/24/grange_on_nhl_cba_who_will_blink_first/
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=403677
http://www.hockeybuzz.com/boards/thread.php?thread_id=100580&forum_id=1&page=last
