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  CBA: Optimism wanes

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Last week Detroit Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman was among the optimists who thought there was still time to save the NHL season. This week he is singing a different, much more pessimistic tune.

"I don't see it happening," Yzerman told the Detroit News in Sunday's editions. "The philosophies haven't changed and there's no compromise in sight. I'd hoped at the last moment the owners would move off the salary cap, but they're not going to. I don't see a deal being done in the next week, and that's pretty much all the time that's left."

Colorado Avalanche captain Joe Sakic isn't optimistic about hockey being played this season either.

"Because it's almost February, I'm not very hopeful,"  Sakic told the Denver Post. "I'd like to be surprised, but the way things have gone, I'm not all that hopeful."

Pittsburgh Penguins player-owner Mario Lemieux is split when it comes to the chances of hockey being played this season. He told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he thinks there is a "50-50" chance the two seasons NHL and NHLPA can agree to a new CBA and the season can be saved.

"They're negotiating hard and trying to make a deal that's fair for both sides," Lemieux told the newspaper. "Hopefully, they can do that quickly."

Lemieux hasn't been directly involved in the negotiations but he did tell the Tribune-Review that he has spent a lot of time talking to Toronto Maple Leafs forward Tie Domi, who is considered to be an influential member of the NHLPA. 

Lemieux told the paper that he is hoping to use his own influence to help players see the issues from both sides.

"Hopefully," he told the Tribune-Review. "I think the guys understand -- and they're starting to realize -- what's at stake here. Both sides have to give a little bit, and hopefully they all realize that you have to make a deal that allows everybody to stay competitive and make money."

But the consensus is the league apparently won't be giving in on the main sticking point in the talks -- a salary cap. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is quoted as saying "we won't compromise on the cap" in an interview with Stan Fischler of the MSG Network.

"If this is going to be an ideological question over the cap, then it is not going to be. It's his (NHLPA Executive Director Bob Goodenow) call," Bettman told Fischler.

That's why many people expect that if the league does make another formal proposal this week it will contain another version of the cap. It may be dressed up differently than past versions, but the hard cap will still be there.

Although a good deal was made about what the league presented as concepts in last Thursday's meeting in New York, one key number apparently didn't change a lot. That was that players would get about 54 percent of league revenues.

The league reportedly adjusted the payroll range from the $34 to $38 million range of its December proposal to the neighborhood of $32 million to $42 million during last week's discussion of concepts.

Those new numbers, based on the formula the league used in it's December proposal, probably increased the players' share to 54.6 percent from 54.0 percent.

The league reportedly said Thursday it might be willing to go giving players 55 percent of league revenues. By adjusting the payroll range to $31 million to $44 million or $30 million to $45 million, the players' share might end up in that 55 percent range.

So, the league could end up raising the high end team salary cap to $45 million from $38 million and what the league has done is increase the players' share of revenues from 54 percent to 55 percent.

That would be movement to the league. Go back to Bettman's press conference on December 14 when the league offered its counter-proposal to the NHLPA's offer based on the 24 percent rollback. 

"If you accept everything the Union says will result from their proposal, the players will receive 56.6% of our revenues on Day 1 of a new agreement. To repeat, the players' proposal translates to 56.6%. We countered at 54%," he said.

Now, the league could approach 55 percent in its next -- and what could could be --  final offer. The league will have split the difference in its eyes.

That percentage figure is really what is important to the league. That is the essence of cost certainty.  It's a defined link between player costs and revenues. That's what the league is negotiating. But they've been negotiating it with themselves. 

The players haven't been negotiating that percentage at all. They never offered 56 percent. That's just what the league said would result from the NHLPA's offer of 24 percent rollback.

Regardless of what the league's next offer is, how high the team salary cap is, whether a luxury tax is incorporated into it, it's almost a given that it will contain that link between player costs and league revenues.

That, players say, won't fly because they aren't interested in negotiating a system that caps salaries league-wide.

"The NHL not wanting to talk without having a hard salary cap on teams league-wide, it's not something we're not going to address," New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur told the Bergen Record. "So, I don't know what that's going to bring us."

Unless the league changes its mind and drops the player costs-revenue link or the players have a change of heart and are ready to negotiate a percentage with the league, chances are the league's next offer will brings us the same result we have been seeing some time now.

That's why Steve Yzerman has gone from being an optimist to a pessimist.