Talks between NHL owners and players on a new collective bargaining agreement hit a wall in Toronto on Thursday, Oct. 18, as the league rejected three counterproposals from the union.
After owners made their first proposal in more than a month on Tuesday, NHL Players Association executive director Donald Fehr arrived in Toronto with a group of 18 players for Thursday's bargaining sessions. But those talks quickly ended once the league and union hit a familiar rift.
According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, the union submitted two written proposals, which had players earning 55 percent of league revenue in 2012-13. The owners' last proposal had player salaries at 50 percent of revenue this season, and the person said the union's proposals were based on the league earning more than the $3.3 billion it made in 2011-12 -- meaning even at a smaller percentage of revenue, players would earn more this season than they did last year.
Fehr said the two proposals would arrive at a 50-50 revenue split in Year 3 and Year 5. By that point, the person with direct knowledge said, the union had projected league revenue would grow enough that players would never make less than the $1.881 billion they earned in 2011-12.
The third proposal, which Fehr said would provide an immediate split of revenue if owners would guarantee the full value of existing contracts, was not a formal document, according to the person with direct knowledge of the situation.
Read More: Hopes for NHL labor deal dim - TwinCities-com
The NHL wiped out the third week of the regular season yesterday as the lockout dragged on, leaving no more wiggle room if the league hopes to play a full 82-game schedule.
A day after the NHL turned down three counterproposals from players, the league canceled 53 more games. A total of 135 games through Nov. 1 have been scratched, which amounts to 11 percent of the season. “As expected,” New York Rangers goalie Martin Biron told The Associated Press in a text message. “We continue to work hard to find an agreement and get back to playing hockey.” In its third lockout since 1994, the NHL is sticking to its most recent proposal that stated a full 82-game-per-team schedule could be played if the season begins by Nov. 2. The league says a deal must be reached with the union by next Thursday for that to happen.
Daniel Alfredsson isn’t merely counting the days of the NHL lockout, he knows his time as a professional hockey player is limited, too.
The longtime captain of the Ottawa Senators isn’t lacking for things to do, though, while he waits for the NHL and the players’ association to work out their differences and get the already-delayed season under way.
With four kids at home, and being heavily involved with their on-ice development, the 16-year NHL veteran is busy. He keeps one eye on the labor negotiations and another on everyday things. That includes providing quite a surprise for some unsuspecting youngsters who hit the ice for a night practice last week.
As part of a project by the NHLPA, players across North America are showing up unannounced at hockey practices to say hi, providing young players with a tip or two, and hanging around after spirited spins on the ice.
Last week was Alfredsson’s turn at the West Carleton Minor Hockey Association in Carp, Ontario, where more than a dozen 16-year-olds on the Midget B team were honing their skills.
“It was a lot of fun,” Alfredsson told The Associated Press. “The surprise of the kids — they were just going to start scrimmaging when I stepped on the ice. And they said, `What are you doing here?’ They were so shocked.”
So far, at least 75 players have visited 55 minor hockey teams since the lockout began in September. Nearly 1,000 children and teens have had an NHLPA member join their team for a practice, and the players have combined to spend more than 100 hours at rinks in the past few weeks. A nice bit of public relations built into an effort to give back to the game.
“I stayed on half an hour after to sign some autographs and talk to them a bit,” Alfredsson said. “I still got the feeling that they were thinking, `Did this really happen?’ For me it was a lot of fun to give them a special day at a late-night practice that started at 9:30.”
Alfredsson should have been in an NHL arena in front of about 17,000 people, but that isn’t possible these days — not with the league and union embroiled in another labor dispute that has produced the league’s third lockout since 1994.
Read More: NHL players make good use of down time : Times Argus Online
The NHL has canceled all games through Nov. 1. That obviously means Phoenix Coyotes fans will not see NHL hockey at all this month. But, hockey fans in the greater Phoenix area can still see quality hockey, often on the same nights as the Coyotes were scheduled to play. How is that possible, you ask? Well, you can stop conversing with your computer screen and direct it to the Arizona State University hockey website.
The Sun Devils D1 men’s hockey team is 9-0 to start the season. The Devils defeated the San Diego State University Aztecs on both Friday and Saturday night by a combined 22-3 score. In the most recent ACHA national rankings (about two weeks ago), ASU was ranked number 2 in the nation. The Devils have gone 4-0 since the ranking.
If you miss hockey or just want to have an enjoyable night out, ASU hockey is the way to go. The games are fast-paced and exciting and with the way the team has been playing, more likely than not you will see a win for ASU.
Hockey fans can catch ASU hockey on the radio at 1330 AM The Blaze, live and archived on video webcasts on the team website and, of course, in person at Oceanside Ice Arena. The arena is located at1520 N. McClintock Drive in Tempe, and is the home to both D1 and D2 ASU hockey teams. Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students.
The Devils play again at home this Thursday (8:30 pm vs. Eastern Michigan) and Friday (8:00 pm vs. Colorado State) night.
Read more at ASU Provides Hockey Fix During NHL Lockout
Complete a new collective bargaining agreement by Thursday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has said, and the league will be able to salvage an 82-game regular season.
It's a matter of perspective just how probable that is, however. Some observers contend that, rhetoric aside, the NHL and its Players' Association are relatively close to settling on economic matters, while others feel there's a fiscal chasm which won't be bridged unless one side makes monumental concessions.
What is certain is that the league and NHLPA will have to meet again if there is to be any chance of a deal. Although the parties were in contact over the weekend, no such session has been announced as of Sunday night.
Getting in the full complement of 82 games, albeit with more games shoehorned into the original schedule and a few weeks tacked on to the end of it, is the best case for all concerned.
The worst, of course, is that the 2012-13 season will end up mirroring 2004-05, which was wiped out by the league's previous lockout.
It also is possible, of course, that a new CBA will be forged in time to save part, but not all, of the season. That happened in 1994-95, when a similar labor dispute resulted in a 48-game schedule.
Precisely how fans, especially casual ones, would react to an abbreviated season is difficult to project.
Many have expressed disgust with one side, or both, since the league shut down Sept. 15, and some have insisted they won't buy NHL tickets or merchandise this winter, regardless of how the CBA talks play out.
It's likely that at least a portion of that group will embrace the NHL when it returns, regardless of how long and/or nasty the lockout proves to be, but there certainly is potential for long-term damage to the league's popularity, at least in some markets.
That would seem to be a particular danger for some warm-weather franchises, where the fan base might be a bit more fickle than those in traditional hockey towns.
Read more: NHL lockout could chill hockey's future in warm markets - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The good news is they are talking about scheduling negotiations for the middle of this week. The bad news is they cannot agree on when to meet, or what they should talk about.
So officially, according to an e-mail message Monday from NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, there is “nothing planned.” However, hope remains NHL labour talks will restart Wednesday, perhaps, in New York. That is the frustrating part of the latest lockout. Both sides admit there is a deal to be made, but neither is willing to be the first to say: let’s negotiate from that point.
That point was reached last week, when the NHL owners made a surprise offer and the NHL Players’ Association responded with three counter-offers. For the first time, the players acknowledged a 50-50 share of revenue is the goal, but, so far, that’s as far as it went.
One gets the feeling that if someone could grab each side by the scruff of the neck and sit them at a table with no chance of leaving for at least 12 hours, the lockout could end. (After all, if you total the time spent actually negotiating in this dispute, it probably wouldn’t come to much more than 12 hours.)
Most of the important negotiating sessions have followed the same pattern: one side makes its case and the other walks out in a huff a few minutes later. Then, the duelling media leaks and press conferences start.
This is simply inconceivable in an industry that continues to spin record revenue, despite a world economy that remains stuck in a recession. After seven years spent pulling its business out of the periphery of the professional sports industry, these people are acting like they don’t care if the NHL drives away enough fans to once again make it an fringe league.
The answer will have to come from the moderates on both sides. Many of them are quietly agonizing, wondering if they need to start putting even more pressure on negotiators to get moving.
Both sides know this is the key week to get a new collective agreement – even if the Thursday deadline to make a deal or see the possibility of a full 82-game regular season go up in smoke was another arbitrary one set by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
But it is a deadline grounded in reality.
While there is still some flexibility, unless the players and owners make serious progress this week, there simply will not be enough time to shoehorn 82 games into the calendar. This would allow the NHL to finish the Stanley Cup final by the end of June – an outrageously late date to be sure – and still give the players some semblance of rest between games.
The league is insisting if negotiations are to continue, the NHLPA has to negotiate based on the owners’ 50-50 offer of last week. But the owners are also sending signals they are willing to make at least some concessions on their “make-whole” proposal, which is the biggest issue with the players.
Union, quite rightly, says it wants all existing contracts to be paid in full. Why else would the owners have signed all those players just before the lockout, the NHLPA asks? (Okay, the cynics will say, the owners had no intention of honouring them, but that has the nasty smell of collusion about it.)
For their part, the owners say they are willing to see that the players get their money. The problem is, they want to do it by taking more money from the players in the later years of a new agreement. When the players point this out, the owners counter that by insisting they be paid in full, the players are sticking to an unrealistic 56- or 57-per-cent share of league revenue.
Sensible people would say the solution is to start a new agreement, with a players’ share slightly higher than 50 per cent (53 anyone?) and work it down to 50 within two or three years. That way, the escrow effect that lowers contracted salaries is lessened so the players take a haircut on their contracts they can live with and the owners get to the magic numbers of 50-50.
But the moderates need to get louder for that to happen.
Time to break the cycle in NHL lockout mess - The Globe and Mail
While the NHL Players’ Association has not decided if it will file a complaint of unfair labour practice over commissioner Gary Bettman granting permission for the league’s management personnel to talk directly to the players about its latest offer, the move was widely seen as one more public-relations gaffe for the NHL.
“If anything, these tactics actually end up building solidarity with unionized employees,” said Steven Barrett, a partner in the Toronto law firm Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP and an expert in labour law. “In this sort of situation no one likes to see the authority of their representatives undermined in that way.
“It can actually end up being not a particularly intelligent strategy for an employer to follow.”
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly downplayed the move, which came last week, one day after the league posted its offer for a collective agreement that split NHL revenue on a 50-50 basis with the players on the league’s web site. He called it a non-issue and said in an e-mail message he was confident the league did not violate any rules about unfair labour practices.
In a carefully-worded memo sent to all 30 NHL teams, Bettman said it was understood players were calling management about the offer. He gave them permission to discuss the offer for 48 hours, last Thursday and Friday, and cautioned the executives about what they could and could not say. Failure to observe the proper procedure, the memo said, “can both set us back in our effort to resolve this work stoppage and cause serious legal problems.”
Given that the move followed the NHL owners’ hiring of a notorious Republican spin doctor in what was revealed as a strategy to try and divide the players, Bettman took another lambasting from the players’ side. They were especially critical since the NHL commissioner had a gag order in effect on the owners and general managers with heavy fines for those who spoke publicly about the lockout.
Read More: NHL end-around seen as another PR gaffe for league - The Globe and Mail
The NHL says a full 82-game season is not possible if a new collective bargaining agreement isn't reached by Thursday.
And with no talks planned, a shortened schedule is beginning to look like the best-case scenario.
On Wesdneday, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Canadian Press there is no way a full schedule can start after Nov. 2. The league has maintained that training camps would have to open by Friday in order for the season to begin a week later.
However, negotiations have stalled since the sides exchanged proposals last week.
An invitation from the NHL Players' Association to reopen talks "without preconditions" was quickly denied by the NHL on Tuesday night. The request came after a conference call with the union's executive board and was seen as a way to "bridge the gap," according to a NHLPA spokesman.
The league saw little value in sitting down together if neither side was prepared to offer something new.
"They have indicated a willingness to meet, but they also told us they had very little interest in the proposal we tabled last Tuesday," said Daly. "(They) also said they weren't making a new proposal. What would we be meeting about?"
Read more: Full NHL season no longer possible if Thursday deadline passes: league
The insistence that all players must have their contracts honoured in full — and that is their side of the idiocy that is the current NHL lockout — is a foolhardy and costly stance that is not supported by historical evidence.
It raises the question: What exactly are the players fighting for?
While the salaries of NHL players were momentarily cut back after the lockout of 2004-05 — and Donald Fehr references this give back often — the truth is, not all players’ salaries were cut at that time and tracking the salary structure of the years that followed demonstrated that the 24% rollback was basically as irrelevant for the players as was their fight against the salary cap.
A certainty: Anyone and everyone who can play in the league and who has played in the league at any reasonable level has not been affected post-lockout of 2005 regarding the size of their salary.
Take the current Maple Leafs payroll as an example, the team with which I’m most familiar. Even players such as Joffrey Lupul and Tim Connolly, who have had uneven careers, have done spectacularly well financially considering both had their salaries chopped in 2005 (Lupul 24%; Connolly 16%).
But over the years, even Connolly’s somewhat uninspiring play hasn’t really cost him in paycheques. He has received salary bumps of 112%, 36%, 17%, 29% and 22% since giving back the original 16%.
In all, Connolly was paid more than five times his post-lockout salary last season in Toronto. So how exactly did that salary rollback hurt him long term?
Over those similar years, NHL revenue grew 57% from $2.1-billion to $3.3-billion. That was impressive.
Connolly is up 430%.
It makes you wonder what the players are fighting about.
You can make a similar case with so many players. Lupul’s salary in the year preceeding the lockout: $1.185 million. It dropped post-lockout to $900,000. Then came the pay raises: 67% and 69% in back to back seasons. That was followed by 14% and 47% increases in pay.
The post-lockout scorecard for Lupul: Yes, he was victim of the 24% cutback. But even though his career had all kinds of problems until landing in Toronto, his salary rose from $900,000 to $4.25 million — and his next contract should dwarf that one.
Lupul post-lockout has seen his salary grow 373% in seven years, an average of 53% per year.
The league grew by about 8% a season on average.
Now understand this: I am not backing the NHL in this fight. They signed these contracts. That was their mistakes. They messed up their own business at a time when business was oh so good. All they had to was show some kind of restraint. A restraint they have been historically incapable of demonstrating.
The players can fight all they want in a dollar for dollar argument on their contracts but the financial reality is rather evident: If you can play in the NHL, star or not, scorer or grinder, you will be compensated well beyond any reasonable expectation and very well in comparison with the other professional leagues in North America. (A quick aside: World Series Game 1 hero Pablo Sandoval makes $3.2 million for the San Francisco Giants.)
The year off stung players in 2005 and those late in their careers lost money they had no opportunity of recovering. But the big news, the 24% rollback, only affected those who a) weren’t good enough or b) were at the end of the line and had already made their money.
So I repeat: What exactly are the players fighting for? Why the reluctance to give back when the proof is you won’t be hurt long-term for doing so.
Post-lockout, Mikhail Grabovski has had raises of 21%, 224%, 4%, 9% and 100%. That was over a five-year period.
Phil Kessel has raises of 429% and 33% since making the NHL.
Matthew Lombardi has seen his salary increase by 78%, 94%, 52% and 49%: Imagine what the raises would have been if he’d actually been productive.
After his initial contract, Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf received a 643% raise. And after playing 37 games for the Leafs, James Reimer received a raise of 300%.
And we haven’t even got to Mike Komisarek, poster boy for the bad contract. Komisarek was one of those unfortunates hit with a large cut after the lockout. He lost 20% of his salary between the end of 2004 and the beginning of the 2005-06 season.
The first cut was the deepest. There haven’t been any others since. On an annual basis, his salary has increased by 5%, 58%, 27%, 137% and 22%, going from $901,740 in the year after the lockout to $5.5 million this past season — an overall increase of more than 500%.
And he can’t play top four on most teams, including one that hasn’t made the playoffs post-lockout. Over those years, the league made 57%. Komisarek 500%.
So please tell me: When there’s enough money for everyone, what are the players fighting for?
NHL players make dollars but no sense | Hockey | Sports | Toronto Sun
The N.H.L. canceled its November schedule Friday, the 41st day of the lockout, eliminating 191 more games. In a season that was supposed to start Oct. 11, the league has lost 326 games — about 22 per team, or 26.5 percent of the regular season. The cancellations took place a day after the expiration of a league deadline for preserving a full 82-game schedule. Donald Fehr, executive director of the players union, said the league had withdrawn its most recent offer for a new collective bargaining agreement, another complication in stalled negotiations.
“This is deeply disappointing for all hockey fans and everyone who makes their living from hockey, including the players,” Fehr said in a statement. “But it comes as no surprise.”
The owners’ proposal included a 50-50 revenue split with players, down from the 57 percent players received under the old collective bargaining agreement, which expired Sept. 15. The union rejected the offer last week because, Fehr said, it did not guarantee the full value of current contracts.
Three counterproposals from the union were dismissed by the league because, Commissioner Gary Bettman said, they either took several years to reach a 50-50 revenue split or did not genuinely offer a 50-50 split.
The sides have not met since Oct. 18, and several union attempts to resume negotiations in recent days were turned down by the league.
“The message from the owners seems to be: if you don’t give us exactly what we want, there is no point in talking,” Fehr said. “They have shown they are very good at delivering deadlines and demands, but we need a willing partner to negotiate. We hope they return to the table in order to get the players back on the ice soon.”
Bill Daly, the deputy commissioner, said in a statement: “We acknowledge and accept that there is joint responsibility in collective bargaining and, though we are profoundly disappointed that a new agreement has not been attained to this point, we remain committed to achieving an agreement that is fair for the players and the clubs — one that will be good for the game and our fans.”
Among the games canceled Friday was the Rangers’ matinee at Boston on Nov. 23, the first game on NBC’s N.H.L. schedule. The Jan. 1 Winter Classic, the most important regular-season game on the schedule, is in jeopardy. This season’s Classic, between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs, was expected to draw about 115,000 fans to Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.
If a settlement is reached in time to resume play Dec. 1, each team could play a 60-game schedule. That would enable the playoffs to begin on schedule April 16.
NEW YORK – In cities with professional hockey teams, it seems the only thing on ice these days is sales – at least at the bars, restaurants and other small businesses that cater to sports fans.
Bars and restaurants normally filled to capacity in St. Paul, Minn., on nights when there’s a Minnesota Wild game have empty tables. An impasse between the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association has resulted in games being canceled at the nearby Xcel Energy Center. That means fewer people are coming into town.
Business at the Great Waters Brewing Co., a brewpub located near the Xcel Center, is down 20 percent since the start of the lockout. For owner Sean O’Byrne, it’s a painful reminder of the 2004-05 lockout that wiped out the entire NHL season.
But he says the current dispute, which so far has resulted in games being canceled through November, is harder because small businesses like his are still recovering from the Great Recession.
“The economic times are different now, and I think the one thing that’s become apparent to me is the sort of ripple effect the hockey strike has,” he says. “It’s not just the bars and restaurants, it’s the local food vendors and their suppliers.”
Strikes and lockouts in major sports leagues – whether it’s this year’s NHL lockout, last year’s National Basketball Association lockout or baseball and football strikes of the past – can have a devastating effect on small businesses that cater to sports fans.
When 18,000 fans don’t stream into a downtown arena on a game night, restaurants and bars have far fewer people to serve and parking lots can sit empty. There are fewer shoppers in downtown stores.
It’s particularly painful in a town like St. Paul or Pittsburgh, where there’s no NBA team to help make up for the losses. And it’s tough for a business still being hurt by a weak economy.
So far, the NHL has canceled more than a quarter of the season. Each team plays 42 home games. The impact of the lockout stretches across 30 teams in U.S. cities including Nashville, Tenn., Los Angeles and Raleigh, N.C. Twenty-three of the teams are in the U.S. and the rest are in Canada.
In Pittsburgh, each canceled game at the Consol Energy Center is estimated to cost the city $2.2 million, says Craig Davis, president of VisitPittsburgh, the city’s tourism office. That amount includes tickets and food sales at the arena, spending at restaurants and bars, hotel rooms and parking. Not all of that money is lost by small businesses – many hotels, for example, are owned by big corporations. And downtown Pittsburgh hosts conventions during the fall, which helps mitigate some of the financial damage.
Still, for small companies that benefit from having a hockey team nearby, the timing couldn’t be worse.
“Businesses are coming out of the worst six years in the economy, and so they’re already in a precarious position,” says St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. “They’re completely dependent on 42 days of hockey to make their year.”
St. Paul and nearby Minneapolis are big hockey towns. The previous NHL team, the North Stars, played in nearby Bloomington until they moved to Dallas in 1993. The Wild began playing in 2000. And the University of Minnesota team has many local fans.
St. Paul businesses had particularly high hopes for this season because the Wild recently acquired two big stars, forward Zach Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter, Coleman says.
“It’s a double whammy, the anticipation was so great that coming out of a recession, this was going to be a really good year for us,” he says.
Some business owners changed their approach after the 2004-05 lockout, says Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce. One strategy many owners have adopted is to increase their marketing efforts to nearby businesses to expand their customer base, he says.
“A lot of people who saw that lockout as unbelievable and painful said, ‘we’ll never put ourselves in a position again where we’re dependent on a single business,’” Kramer says. “People have tried to be a little more careful about saying, ‘we’re a hockey bar.’”
An owner who can’t escape his connection to hockey is Tom Reid, a former North Stars defenseman who owns Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub, two blocks from the Xcel Center. Reid says his business is down 70 percent on nights when hockey games were scheduled.
The lockout means Reid has no need for his usual contingent of 30 to 35 servers. Right now, he has six.
“We’ve trained some people, but we can’t bring them in until we have the business to support it,” he says.
The Durango Herald 10/28/2012 | NHL lockout hurts small businesses
Add Jack Johnson's voice to the chorus of owner-bashing players.
The Columbus Blue Jackets defenceman posted his thoughts about the NHL lockout on his own website Sunday, ripping the league and team owners in a piece titled "Where it the honor?" He's the latest NHLer to take pot shots for the way players are being treated during the lockout.
"The concept that the owners are trying to dismantle existing contracts that they in good faith offered, signed, and committed to is appalling, unprofessional and disgraceful," Johnson wrote. "I negotiated my own contract, without an agent, with the confidence and belief that the owner offering me that contract operated by the same convictions and principals as I do. During the summer, the players offered to play through negotiations and the owners locked us out.
"We want to play hockey! Where is the honor? I'm ready to play and uphold my end of the deal!"
GOALIES LOOK FOR WORK
All-star goaltenders Marc-Andre Fleury of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Ryan Miller of the Buffal Sabres could soon try to land gigs with European teams.
Neither has been playing overseas during the lockout but that could soon change as the dispute drags on. Fleury has played in charity games in Quebec but Miller has been inactive.
"I'm starting to think about (playing in Europe)," Fleury told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
So, too, is Miller.
"If a team needs a goalie, I need to start considering it," Miller told ESPN.
Many European goalies have found temporary work in European leagues but few North Americans have made the trek across the pond. Jonathan Bernier of the L.A. Kings and Rick DiPietro of the New York Islanderrs signed with a team in Germany earlier this month but most are staying close to home.
Read More: NHL notes: Jack Johnson slams owners | Hockey | Sports | Toronto Sun
Last Thursday was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the NHL's lockout, a day for the owners and players to put their heads down and come up with a deal to preserve an 82-game schedule.
Instead, both sides carried on with their hollow, spiteful war of words, to the intense anger or, increasingly, apathy of the fans who actually fund their business.
Various reports Monday once again suggested the league is only days away from cancelling the Winter Classic, its ratings darling, the top showcase for American spectators and sponsors and the crown jewel of a $2 billion, 10-year broadcast deal with NBC in the United States.
This year's tilt between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings is supposed to take place Jan. 1 at the 110,000-seat University of Michigan stadium in Ann Arbor, Mich.
We'll get back to hockey in a second, after we talk about what a great week it's been for soccer fans here in North America.
While staring down the $200 million payment it'll owe the NHL this year even if it doesn't get to broadcast a single game, NBC was also making strides in a different direction over the weekend.
The network announced it has secured the rights to broadcast up to 1,140 Barclays Premier League soccer games in the United States over the next three seasons at a cost of about $80 million per year. And hey, those games will actually happen.
That deal follows moves by upstart network beIN SPORT to bring Spain's La Liga, France's Ligue 1 and Italy's Serie A to more screens in America.
Here's how NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus described the English league deal to the New York Times, while also discussing why the network dropped its bid for Major League Baseball rights: "Baseball is a good product, and we had an appetite for it at a certain level, but the price we're paying for the Premier League is a terrific value for us."
TSN and Sportsnet here in Canada seem to agree on the league's value. On Monday, both networks announced new deals to carry the Premier League for the next three years, to go along with their various rights agreements for the 2014 World Cup, 2015 Women's World Cup (taking place in Canada) and Euro 2016.
But who cares, right? Soccer is still a marginal sport here -- especially European soccer.
Well, NBC, Sportsnet and TSN see something that many people who dismiss soccer as foreign and and a fringe sport in North America are missing: This is the most popular game on the globe, and it's growing.
Every year, it sinks its teeth into new markets and, while it may not be as Canadian as maple pie (or something), I'd bet a massive majority of the 250,000 or so immigrants who arrive here every year prefer it to hockey.
It's low-cost draft pick that could turn into a star.
Barclays Premier League ratings are up 10 per cent on Sportsnet this year (to an average of 149,000), while TSN reported viewership doubled for Euro 2012 this summer versus the previous tournament, with 17.5 million unique visitors taking in at least part of the tourney across five Bell Media networks.
All that is to say nothing of Major League Soccer, which becomes a more polished and credible league every year. On the local level, the NASL will begin planting roots here in 2014.
And the NHL? Every day this lockout continues, the more Mickey Mouse it looks. Its stars are scattered across Europe as once-loyal customers start looking around for something else to take interest in.
Sure, revenues are up significantly since the last lockout, but the NHL has successfully stuck its foot out and sent that momentum sprawling awkwardly to the floor. Every day, resentment grows.
If the NHL follows through and cancels the Winter Classic (and eventually the season), it will cause irreparable damage to itself and cede ground on the sports landscape it can ill afford to lose.
Maybe it starts when a fan here springs for the Sportsnet World package instead of Centre Ice, or a fan there buys a Manchester City jersey instead of a Bruins one.
Yes, many people will flock back to the NHL. But many won't.
It took Major League Baseball 10 years to get even a sniff of the same attendance levels it enjoyed prior to losing the 1994 World Series to a player strike. Baseball eventually recovered, but it's already America's pastime. In many markets, hockey is already America's afterthought.
As this week's Premier League deals show, competition for fans' money and attention spans is only going to get more intense from here on out.
And all the while the NHL sits idle, twiddling its thumbs.
Locked-out NHL players had the pain of missing their first full pay period offset Tuesday when they received last season’s escrow cheque.
Players were returned 7.98 per cent of what they earned last year, plus interest, one day before their second paycheque of the 2012-13 season would have been due, according to a spokesman for the NHL Players’ Association. The escrow payments amount to about $80,000 for every million dollars a player earned — before deductions. For example, New York Rangers forward Brad Richards grossed approximately $960,000 after being the league’s highest-paid player last season.
Under the terms of the expired collective bargaining agreement, NHL players had a portion of their salaries deducted throughout the season and placed into an escrow account. Once the final accounting for a year was completed, which ensured the correct percentage of revenue was paid out in salaries, players were refunded accordingly.
Tuesday’s escrow payment came at an important time with the lockout set to eliminate another pay cycle. Players also missed a cheque on Oct. 15, but that would only have covered four days of work. The paycheque they were to have been given Wednesday would have been for a full half-month period.
NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr met with a group of players in Minnesota on Monday night and acknowledged in an interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that some of his constituents are concerned about lost wages that are mounting during the lockout.
“But that doesn’t mean you make a bad agreement because of it,” Fehr told the newspaper.
The NHL’s labour talks have been on hold since Oct. 18, when the NHLPA countered a league offer with three proposals of its own. Each of those was quickly rejected.
Since then, a league-imposed deadline to play a full season passed without further talks and the NHL cancelled all games through Nov. 30. The Jan. 1 Winter Classic outdoor game is expected to be wiped off the schedule later this week.
Superstorm Sandy forced the NHL to close its New York headquarters on Monday and Tuesday, but deputy commissioner Bill Daly indicated that it didn’t affect the bargaining process. However, he added in an email that there was no progress to report on the labour front.
NHL players get escrow cheques - The Globe and Mail
All was quiet on the NHL labor front Wednesday, marking the 13th consecutive day representatives of the league and the players' association did not meet.
Donald Fehr, executive director of the NHL Players' Association, complained about the league's lack of negotiating in the latest letter he sent to the players.
"At every opportunity we have continued to state that we are ready to meet and willing to discuss all open issues, including the owners' last offer," Fehr wrote. "Nonetheless, to date, their group has declined to commit to a meeting unless it can dictate what the agenda is."
Bill Daly, the NHL's deputy commissioner, did not respond to an e-mail Wednesday asking him to respond to Fehr.
In recent days, Daly and Steve Fehr, Donald's brother and the NHLPA's special counsel, have spoken over the phone about numerous issues, but the conversation has not led to any face-to-face meetings.
ESPN has reported that the league will cancel the Jan. 1 Winter Classic on Thursday, though NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has said a decision could be delayed until mid-November.
The league estimates it has lost $720 million because games have been canceled through Nov. 30. Twenty-two of the Flyers' 82 games have been canceled.
The lockout, imposed by the owners, reached its 46th day on Wednesday.
Top lieutenants for NHL owners and the Players Association spent part of Thursday on the phone, but won’t be meeting face-to-face anytime soon.
On a day when the players’ negotiating committee held a positive affirmation conference call as the lockout approaches 50 days, the Red Wings and Leafs prepared for the league’s anticipated cancellation of the Winter Classic outdoor game on Friday. Waiting any longer would start costing the league a chunk of its $3-million rental fee of the University of Michigan Stadium.
Meanwhile, in Ann Arbor itself, thoughts are already turning to staging the game on New Years Day 2014, with the same teams. Nothing has been discussed, but both Original Six teams would be willing to return, not to mention the 100,000-plus fans who would have set an NHL record.
“To say the game will be sorely missed this January is obvious,” said Diane Keller, president of the Ann Arbor chamber of commerce. “We hope all the people who were going to come still do to spend the holiday in this area. But I think everyone here would be ready to go the extra mile for this kind of event again.”
TOUGH END TO BARONS' WEEK
The Oklahoma City Barons, super-charged farm team of the Edmonton Oilers, had an eventful week, though one that ended on a difficult note.
The good news was that former No. 1 overall pick Taylor Hall finally received medical clearance to play from a March shoulder injury. It also meant he was officially locked out, albeit briefly, before signing a separate minor-league contract. Whichever way the paperwork was settled, Hall joins a Barons lineup that includes Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle, Justin Schultz and Magnus Paajarvi.
You’ll remember Schultz as the NCAA free-agent defenceman sought by at least five NHL teams, including the Maple Leafs and Canucks, when he became unrestricted last summer by not signing with his draft team, the Anaheim Ducks. On Thursday, Schultz was named American Hockey League player of the month, with a point in all seven games and three straight two-point games entering November.
Read More: Cold war between NHL, players continues | Hockey | Sports | Toronto Sun
The New Year's Day outdoor game between the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs had been scheduled to be held at the University of Michigan's 'Big House.'
The showcase Winter Classic became the latest casualty of the labor dispute between the NHL and players, canceled by the league a day before it was to make an additional payment for staging the New Year's Day outdoor game between the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs at the University of Michigan's "Big House."
The Hockeytown Winter Festival, featuring an array of hockey events at Detroit's Comerica Park, also was canceled Friday. The league said in a statement the next Winter Classic and Winter Festival will be held at the same sites but didn't specify when. The NHL had paid the university a nonrefundable fee of $100,000 and would have had to pay $250,000 more by Saturday.
NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told The Times he couldn't estimate the economic impact of canceling the events, which were projected to bring 400,000 people to the Detroit-Ann Arbor area between Dec. 16 and 31.
The Winter Classic, conceived to celebrate the game's roots and attract casual fans, is among the league's most popular events.
Daly said the Winter Classic itself isn't a big revenue producer but is more important to the "overall image and brand value of the league." Last week, after the NHL extended its lockout and canceled games through Nov. 30, Daly estimated the league had lost $720 million in revenues.
Late Friday, Darren Dreger of TSN reported owners had bent on the "make whole" provision in their last proposal, perhaps ensuring players would get the full value of their contracts. Talks were expected to resume this weekend, and could turn into full negotiations next week.
The NHL said in a press release that it was "not in position to do all that is necessary to adequately stage events of this magnitude" because of the absence of a collective bargaining agreement with the players' association. Plans called for constructing two ice rinks and arranging travel and accommodations for participants and support staff.
"We simply are out of time," Daly said. "We are extremely disappointed, for our fans and for all those affected, to have to cancel the Winter Classic and Hockeytown Winter Festival events."
Donald Fehr, executive director of the NHLPA, called the cancellation "unnecessary and unfortunate, as was the owners' implementation of the lockout itself." He added, "We look forward to the league's return to the bargaining table, so that the parties can find a way to end the lockout at the earliest possible date, and get the game back on the ice for the fans."
NHL cancels Winter Classic because of labor dispute - latimes-com
NHL contract talks continued past midnight Saturday aimed at settling the lockout, according to news reports.
USA Today reported that both sides were still meeting at an undisclosed location past midnight Saturday and into Sunday.
This weekend's contract talks are the first ones since both sides last met Oct. 18.
The urgency of the talks heated up this weekend after the league decided Friday to cancel the Winter Classic, one of the NHL's most popular annual events. This year's Classic was slated to be held this season on Jan. 1 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor and feature the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leaves.
All regular-season NHL games through the entire month of November have already been cancelled due to the lockout. More games could be cancelled if both sides fail to reach an agreement soon.
NHL lockout: labor talks continue past midnight, news sources claim | masslive-com
Want proof the locked-out players don't want to lose the 2012-13 NHL season?
According to Vancouver Canucks forward Manny Malhotra, one of the most plugged-in players to the ongoing (or disjointed, depending on your view) negotiations between the NHL and NHLPA, all you need to do is look at how the players are spending their league-imposed downtime. Players are taking their talents to Europe or skating in small groups to stay prepared for when (not if) the season actually starts.
"If we had no desire to get back to the games, we'd be on vacation somewhere stuffing our faces rather than skating and working out every day," Malhotra told the Vancouver Sun. "To say that guys don't want to negotiate and get things done would be a wrong statement."
Malhotra also said the players won't panic even though the Winter Classic became the latest casualty of the lockout Friday when the league pulled the plug on the annual outdoor game.
"We've been educated on what's going on and why these pressure tactics are being used so, again, we're not fazed by it," he said. "It's sad that this is one of their only methods but it is what it is."
HALL GOES INTO HALL
Nearly 40 years after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, Glenn Hall will receive the same honour in the city where he finished his NHL career.
Hall will be one of three inductees into the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame late this month, going in along with former St. Louis cardinals outfielder Jim Edmonds and ex-St. Louis Rams offensive lineman Orlando Pace.
Credited as the goalie who invented the butterfly style, Hall won 407 games in the NHL in his 18-season NHL career. In addition to the Blues, he played for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks -- Hall won the Vezina twice with Chicago and once with St. Louis --and was a seven-time first-team all-star.
But Hall might be best remembered for being the goalie in the famous photo of Boston Bruins defenceman Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring the Stanley Cup-winning goal against the Blues.
MIETTINEN GOES HOME
Winnipeg Jets forward Antti Miettinen has signed with Finnish team HPK, according to EliteProspects-com.
Miettinen will reportedly join the team next week. Former Jets forward Eric Fehr, who is an NHL free agent, is already on the HPK roster.
This isn't the first time Miettinen, who had five goals and eight assists in 45 games with the Jets last season, has played for the club. He played with HPK before moving to the NHL in 2003.
NHL notes: Players want to play, Malhotra says | Home | Toronto Sun
8:17PM EST November 5. 2012 - Formal negotiations between NHL owners and players will resume Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. in New York. Players have been locked out since Sept. 16, and the first seven weeks of the NHL regular season, plus the Winter Classic outdoor game, have already been canceled.
But here are five reasons why fans can have hope of seeing the NHL back in action by December.
1. Urgency seems heightened: Within the NHL industry, there is a sense that something needs to happen this week. Paychecks have been lost and damage is being done to the game. The Winter Classic is gone. Fans have lost interest in the squabble. Both players and team officials seem restless, maybe even anxious to re-engage.
2. Timing is right: Last summer, the consensus prediction was both nothing was going to get done until the players lost two or three paychecks. Owners were looking for concessions, and the best guess was that the two sides weren't going to get on the same page until there were economic consequences. The widely offered theory was that the season might start the day after Thanksgiving. Well, here we are, and that date is a very reasonable objective if the two sides start to make progress.
3. There's still time to save a lengthy season: Since the league is on record as saying it would have played a full 82-game season if it could have started on Nov. 2, it's not a leap to conclude that a 72- to 74-game season is still possible if owners and players can start tracking toward an agreement.
4. The air is clear: NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHL Players' Association second-in-command Steve Fehr talked for many hours on Saturday, and they came out of that meeting saying it was time to resume formal negotiations. That doesn't mean they made significant progress, but they heard enough from each other to want to re-engage.
5. Path is well-marked: It has been clear for a long time about where these negotiations are headed. Players were entitled to 57% of the revenue in the last collective bargaining agreement, and now the owners want a 50-50 split. There will be no deal if players won't go there, and they know that. But players have made it clear that it can't be a sharp drop from 57% to 50% in the first year of the contract. Players want a gradual descent, It seems clear where the compromise is located and where the negotiating must be done. Players are also entrenched on preserving their individual contract rights, such as having unrestricted free agency after seven years and having no limits on the length of their contracts. The two sides have been at this now long enough that there should be no secrets about which issues are important to the other side.
After owners made their first proposal in more than a month on Tuesday, NHL Players Association executive director Donald Fehr arrived in Toronto with a group of 18 players for Thursday's bargaining sessions. But those talks quickly ended once the league and union hit a familiar rift.
According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, the union submitted two written proposals, which had players earning 55 percent of league revenue in 2012-13. The owners' last proposal had player salaries at 50 percent of revenue this season, and the person said the union's proposals were based on the league earning more than the $3.3 billion it made in 2011-12 -- meaning even at a smaller percentage of revenue, players would earn more this season than they did last year.
Fehr said the two proposals would arrive at a 50-50 revenue split in Year 3 and Year 5. By that point, the person with direct knowledge said, the union had projected league revenue would grow enough that players would never make less than the $1.881 billion they earned in 2011-12.
The third proposal, which Fehr said would provide an immediate split of revenue if owners would guarantee the full value of existing contracts, was not a formal document, according to the person with direct knowledge of the situation.
Read More: Hopes for NHL labor deal dim - TwinCities-com