Till Death Do Us Part...Hopefully Bettman’s

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by Nick Casale

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Till Death Do Us Part...Hopefully Bettman’s

Is it just me, or do these CBA negotiations sound a lot like a divorce?
Those of you who know me personally know where I stand on this topic. And I’ll probably lose a good percentage of my female readers by the end of the next paragraph. But I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em, and this is what I see:
Bettman is acting like the greedy ex-wife who believes she’s entitled to whatever she wants—taking it from the people who actually do the work that makes the money.
EXHIBIT A: The owners’ first offer was complete and utter nonsense. A transparent negotiating ploy, it was designed simply to stretch the outer boundaries so that the “middle” would skew heavily in their favor. It’s like saying “I want the kids, the house, both cars, all the savings, and half your salary for the next 20 years”—and then considering it a magnanimous concession when you agree to leave one of the cars behind.
EXHIBIT B: Bettman’s criticism of the player’s proposal was that “it didn’t address what was in our proposal.” Isn’t that just another way of saying, “I don’t care what you want, it’s your job to give me what I want”? You have to think, though, that behind closed doors Don Fehr did give his assessment of the owner’s pitch. And it probably sounded something like “um…yeah, Gar…are you fuckin’ high?”
EXHIBIT C: The league wields the threat of a lockout the way some women wield the threat of domestic violence allegations. It’s the nuclear bomb they’ll drop without a shred of justification, simply because it will help them get what they want. I personally know women whose lawyers advised them to call the police for a restraining order—not because there was an actual threat there, but because it would give them a leg up in the divorce proceedings. And I know at least one woman who has actually used that ploy to perfection. In this fashion, “lockout” was one of the first words out of Bettman’s mouth, and now looks like the inevitable outcome.
The NHLPA is the dutiful husband, looking for solutions to their common problems in the spirit of compromise and collaboration.
EXHIBIT A: The players have agreed to keep playing under the old CBA while the 2 sides continued to hammer out a new one. “No dice,” said the owners’ lawyer. “You can go crash at your parents‘ house (read: the KHL, Swedish Elite League, etc) until I get what I want.”
EXHIBIT B: The last time these 2 sides squabbled, the players swallowed their pride in an attempt to keep the “family” together. The owners’ pitch in 2004? “Just give us a salary cap (oh, and give us back 24% of the salary we already agreed to pay you), and that will fix all our problems” she promised. The players, of course, caved on these 2 key issues.
Well, the game has certainly grown since then, with hockey-related revenues going up from $2.2 billion to $3.3 billion. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The Bettbitch comes back with “Yeah, um, I’m gonna need another 24% of your salary so I can keep paying for doomed expansion experiments that my ego won’t allow me to admit have been miserable failures.”
My fellow divorced men, raise your hand if you’ve ever been promised that things would get better if you made some concessions...so you made those concessions...and not only did it NOT make things better, but she quickly asked you for more.
EXHIBIT C: The NHLPA proposed a fair, equitable solution to the small market/big market problem. Let’s create a pool, they said, to help the small-market teams. That pool will be funded equally by the NHLPA and the big-market teams. “Nope, not good enough,” said Bettman. “You have to pay for the whole thing. Remember that 24% salary cut you took 8 years ago? Yeah, let’s do that again. Oh, and I know you’re getting 57% of the money your hard work brings in. I think it would be more fair if we made that 43%.”
We fans, of course, are the children—the ultimate losers in this battle of overgrown babies.
Most of the hockey fans I know want Gary Bettman fired at best, strung up by his nutsack at the worst. Not that you’d ever hear that from the media, since both the NHL Network and NHL Home Ice on SiriusXM are run in partnership with the league. And many of the top television outlets (Cablevision, Comcast) are owned by the same thugs who own the teams. Kinda reminds me of the time I agreed to go to a mediator with my ex...only to find out later that this “neutral third party” was in fact a friend of her mother’s.
Some fans think both sides are acting like spoiled children. They feel the players shouldn’t complain, as they’re being paid millions to play a game they love. I have to admit this was my stance back in 2004, but not today for reasons detailed above.
And a small percentage of fans vow to never again follow hockey if there’s another lockout this year—the third since that miserable little weasel became Commissioner. But 98% of us will be back...like a child who desperately clings to his parents no matter how selfish and irresponsibly they are acting.
We’ll be back, because we love the game. We’ll be back, because we love screaming at the top of our lungs to cheer our heroes as they score a game-winning goal, pull off an inconceivable save, or punish an opponent for an earlier cheap shot. We’ll be back, because we cherish the camaraderie of our fellow fans. And no one—not Gary Bettman, not Donald Fehr—no one can take that away from us.
Skate with your head up, Nick

September 12, 2012

“I suck”

(C) 2012 Nicholas J. Casale | Got a beef? Think I’m brilliant? Talk to me