My Blueshirt Heaven :: A New York Rangers Blog

This could be the NHL’s last time for the 2012-2013 season to not fade away.

In fact, if there is any season, it will be just known as the 2013 season.

According to reports, the NHL set a firm deadline of January 19^th to start the season with hopes of a 48 game campaign, much like what happened back in 1995.

But for a season to happen, the union must agree to the new proposal, with the salary cap coming down a little more than $10 million for the 2013-14 season  among other concessions.

That kind of compromise won’t be easy as other reports other there have Donald Fehr sitting back and waiting for the owners to cave in. Convinced management doesn’t want to cancel two seasons in eight years, Fehr is playing the waiting game, as the rest of the hockey would sweats it out.

Fehr though has been very difficult to deal with. He did it in baseball and will do it here. With almost 30 years of experience, Fehr may have the upper hand, much like many online betting sites.

But as the National Post wrote: “The NHL has to make a deal with Fehr, or lose a season. He set this up from the beginning to ensure that instead of a Ted Saskin as his deputy, perhaps concealing a knife, there was his brother. The negotiating committee wasn’t allowed to be a side door, or a back door. The league’s attempts to circumvent Fehr — releasing entire proposals one day after saying they would not negotiate publicly, the Edwards threat, the player-owner meetings themselves — haven’t worked. This is the guy they have to deal with. There was never another option.”

On the bright side the NHL may think a deal could be in place soon. The league has spoken to the off-ice official about clearing up their dates for the schedule to come out soon.

Hopefully that is a sign of things to come.

The two sides will resume talking face-to-face later today.

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“The hard part about playing chicken is knowin’ when to flinch” – Captain Bart Mancuso in the Hunt for Red October

All labor negotiations are like a game of chicken. The players, to their credit, didn’t flinch.

At long last, the NHL has finally accepted that the player’s union stands squarely behind its leadership. In an unprecedented display of solidarity, last week the NHLPA voted 706 to 22 to dissolve and potentially pursue legal action against the league.

After coming close to an agreement after American Thanksgiving and earlier in December, the NHLPA threw up its hands and threathened a final recourse, dissolution. The owners and governors only sat up and took notice when the NHLPA showed, by vote, that they wouldn’t back down and would rather dissolve then play for these NHL owners.

Why didn’t they do it sooner? The answer is simple. They had to explore every avenue open to them to bring the league to the table and bargain in good faith. The league continued to remain intransigent.Last week, the time had finally come where the NHLPA felt they had exhausted all avenues.

Since their first draconian offer in July, the league has been trying to fracture, neigh, break the back of the NHLPA. Using every means at its disposal, primarily the media and the court of public (fan) opinion, the league attempted time and time again to show that it was the players who were greedy, who were stalling, who were unwilling to compromise after the NHL’s “Make Whole” offer.

Truth be told, percentages of HRR and “Make Whole” turned out to be less important then the real sticking point in every offer and counteroffer the NHL put on the table. What really mattered to the players most in these negotiations was the NHL’s unwillingness to budge on their ridiculous demands regarding changes to restricted and unrestricted free agency.

Apparently, the latest offer the league has made includes the same terms for RFAs and UFAs as under the expired CBA. When threatened with the loss of the season and dissolution of the NHLPA, many desparate owners must have put the screws to the hardline owners to cave in about player RFA/UFA eligibility. Why did it take the league so long?

The NHL pushed the NHLPA’s back to the wall. The NHL forfeited a whole season once before. They thought the threat of doing so again would make the players cave. What they didn’t count on was the model recent labor disputes in the NFL and the NBA were able to provide the NHLPA. Those precedents emboldened the NHLPA to go to the mat to get the best deal possible.

If the NHLPA comes out of all this with a fair deal, then all the missed games were worth it. I’ll go to games and watch them on TV because I love the New York Rangers. I love our players. I hope the lockout has provided all of the boys the rest and healing they needed after last season’s playoff run. In fact, the lockout may have done Ranger players and fans a favor.

I can’t wait to go to the Garden and see that 2011-2012 Atlantic Division Championship banner.

LET’S GO RANGERS!

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This is the last shot.

The NHL’s new offer to the players association, may be the last hope in saving the season and with this offer comes hope.

Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly confirmed the offer today.

“In light of media reports this morning, I can confirm that we delivered to the Union a new, comprehensive proposal for a successor CBA late yesterday afternoon,” he said in a statement. We are not prepared to discuss the details of our proposal at this time. We are hopeful that once the Union’s staff and negotiating committee have had an opportunity to thoroughly review and consider our new proposal, they will share it with the players. We want to be back on the ice as soon as possible.”

A new round of bargaining is set to start this weekend.

The two sides will meet face-to-face on Sunday after a conference call on Saturday.

The owners reportedly lightened demands about making salary arbitration and free agency harder to achieve and also changed the individual contract variance from five percent to 10 percent.

There is also a one-time buyout in 2013-14 that will help a team get under the $60 million cap and it won’t count towards the salary cap.

If this doesn’t work, the season will probably be cancelled. The owners have postponed over half the games already super bowl betting odds say anymore would make it impossible to have a season.

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I love Henrik Lundqvist to death and I applaud his idea to get some players to meet with owners (other than the hard line Gang of Four, Jacobs, Burke, Leonsis, Edwards), resolve this lockout and get back to playing hockey. I think it’s too late for that.

At this point they might find that many fans don’t want or even care if the National Hockey League comes back.  Gary Bettman, Bill Daly and the majority of the owners have proven by their behavior that they don’t deserve to be the custodians of the game.

For almost 20 years Bettman and his supporters have been dishing up clutch and grab, homogenized, boring hockey where outcomes appear predetermined and entertainment value has gone out the window.

Over expansion has diluted the talent pool in the present NHL. If the league contracted by least four teams, about 100 jobs would be lost. Those 100 are the AHL caliber grabbers and goons that the league could do without.

Now is the perfect time to de-certify. Let the cream rise to the top and the chips fall where they may. No player union means no contracts, no cap ceiling and best of all more talented players vying for fewer jobs. Better hockey.

Owners and teams can negotiate with whom they want, for how much and how long they want. Rich teams can buy up all the talent and the poor teams would go out of business. Survival of the fittest franchises with the most supportive fan bases.

Sure, some players might have to give up their guaranteed contracts and the plush conditions under which they currently play.  You have to give something to get something. But they would be able to negotiate freely and not be jerked around every  five to seven years.

De-certification is capitalism at its best. Laissez-faire. What the market will bear. The wheat will be separated form the chaff. If that includes the unsuccessful franchises and the less talented players, so be it.

I am for a downsized “Premiere” hockey league, kind of like Premiere League soccer. Teams will move up and down within divisions based upon their records. A PHL will benefit teams that have fan bases large enough to support the franchise.

Teams like the Coyotes, the Blue Jackets, the Islanders, the Devils, the Panthers and any other teams that would be a millstone around the neck of profitable teams don’t belong in a premiere league.

Stop settling for the clutch and grab, diluted crap we’ve been watching for the last twenty years.

RIP NHL

We wouldn’t miss you as much as you think.

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Whether you are a Ranger, Islander, Devil or Flyer fan, let’s join together (like the players did for the Hurricane Sandy victims) and show the league that what the fans want counts!

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The Islanders just signed a 25 year lease agreement at the new Barclay Center but someone forgot to tell them the Barclay Center is in “the city”.

I once dated an Islander fan who was the antithesis if everything I am. He hated New York City. The only reason he ever crossed the Nassau County Line was to go to work.

He was an LIRR “Dashing Dan” who couldn’t wait to get off the train and run his toes through his New Hyde Park lawn. He was an Islander fan during the “dynasty”.

I am a lifelong Ranger fan. I live to suck bus fumes and feel the concrete under my feet. I moved to Long Island in the 80′s because I couldn’t find a house I could afford in Queens. I live in hope of moving back to the city some day.

Brooklyn and Queens are home to me. Both of my children were born in Brooklyn. The two New York City boroughs on Long Island are not home to the natives of Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Nassau and Suffolk are home to the Islander’s fan base.

Islander fans will not travel to Brooklyn. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t get it the first time. The current fan base of the Islanders, who number about 5000 to 7000 fans per home game (not counting Ranger and Devil games at the Mausoleum), WILL NOT TRAVEL TO BROOKLYN!

They will not pay $25.00 per ticket round trip from LIRR Zone 10. They will not spend two hours getting to and from a game when they are used to driving their gas guzzling SUV’s 45 minutes and parking in Uniondale. Only crazy Nassau and Suffolk Ranger fans travel.

Islander fans will not do it. No one can tell me they will commute to games in Brooklyn. I’d bet my highly mortgaged house on it. People will travel from all over the Greater New York area and beyond to see Barbra Streisand at the Barclay Center. She’s Barbra for crissakes! They will not travel to Brooklyn to see the Islanders.

The Islanders might go deep in the playoffs next year and they still won’t fill the building. The Devils always have playoff tickets available, even for the Stanley Cup Final. Why would anyone think the situation would be any different with the Islanders in Brooklyn?

Why in hell did they sign a lease as long as DiPietro’s contract? Wang doesn’t give a crap. He’s ready to sell the team anyway. This is the most ridiculous outcome one could have imagined.

I predict that in five years the Islanders will become a burden on the NHL in the same manner as the Phoenix Coyotes. I hope the NHL has to make good on that lease agreement once the  future owner of the Islanders declares bankruptcy.

And, as usual, it will be the profitable, established teams that will have to make up for the shortfall in yet another money grabbing lockout by the owners seven years from the end of this present lockout.

This all smells like dead fish, pun intended.

The only silver lining is that Fishstick fans can drag out their Gorton’s Fisherman jerseys from mothballs. After all, the Barclay’s Center isn’t far from Sheepshead Bay.

This one’s for you, Fishstick Fans:

Memories, Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures, Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?
Memories, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember…
The way we were…
The way we were…

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“Not asking you to like it. But you’ll see pretty soon, pretty soon I’ll trust you because you’ll trust me. Because what’s good for you is good for me and you for me, see? We’re the same. We’re equal. We’re partners, see? 5-0, 5-0. ”

-Mike Conovan from the film “Pat and Mike” (1952)

In one of the funniest movies of its genre, hard nosed sports agent Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy) explains the financial dynamic of sports to Pat Pemberton (Katherine Hepburn). By the end of the movie, Pat and Mike realize they love each other. We have a happy ending with them sharing life 50/50.

When two partners agree to go 50/50, it should signal happiness and harmony. That is unless you are the NHL and the NHL Players Association. Then we all have to assume that one party isn’t being forthcoming with the other. They don’t really want to share.

At face value, it would seem that the NHL offering to go 50/50 on hockey related revenue (HRR) should be a no brainer for the players. The league is backing down and being reasonable after refusing to budge for so long. They are finally moving on a core issue.

Accordingly, or so the NHL demands,  the players should immediately sign on dotted line and begin the season on November 2 to get in an 82 game season. The question everyone should be asking is, why the NHL didn’t make the 50/50 offer on September 14, nay, back in June?

Gary Bettman, condescending little prick that he is, may think that pandering to the fan base with this latest proposal by the NHL will move the fans over to the side of the owners, should the NHLPA reject this proposal.

Not this fan. In the words of Homey the Clown, I don’t think so.

The NHL doesn’t get absolved of the blame for this mess by throwing out a sound bite, 50/50, to the fans.  Granted, our society, especially here in the US in an election year, does focus mostly on sound bites.

But it is my pinion that NHL fans are not gullible. They’ll see this pandering for what it is and look at the whole picture as it unfolds.

Bettman and the owners are looking to hold the Players asses to the fire if they don’t ratify this latest agreement and commence the season by November 2. They want their 82 game season.

They tried to do an end run around the Fehr Brothers. By releasing the terms of the latest offer in the media, the NHL knew the players, and the immediate world, would see it before the Fehrs could analyze it and cogently present it to the NHLPA (fueling the players in a vote of no confidence in the Fehrs and turning the fans against the players).

No one but the players and their representatives have the right to revue the offer and pass judgement on it, especially not the fans. If the players reject this offer, I will be disappointed but I will not slam the players. At the end of the day it’s their career and their livelihood,

Bettman, Daly and the owners he represents are diabolical. What trust? What partnership?

50% of bullshit is still bullshit.

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“We were extremely disappointed to have to make today’s announcement,” Daly said. “The game deserves better, the fans deserve better and the people who derive income from their connection to the NHL deserve better.

“We remain committed to doing everything in our power to forge an agreement that is fair to the players, fair to the teams and good for our fans.

“This is not about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ a negotiation. This is about finding a solution that preserves the long-term health and stability of the league and the game.

“We are committed to getting this done.”

Really, Bill? If the NHL was committed to getting this done, the season would be starting on time.YOU are locking the players out.

The players were ready, willing and able to start training camp, the preseason and the regular season on time. I know that because many players have been hitting local rinks since September 16th to stay in shape.

Now they are signing with teams in Europe and the KHL, some for a mere pittance of their NHL contracts because unlike you, Bettman and the owners, they want to play hockey.

The players and their union are willing to play while negotiations remain ongoing, under the terms of the expired CBA. Why isn’t that doable, Bill? Why isn’t that enough?

The NHL has locked the players out. You are lying through your teeth.

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So the NHL wants all of their ranchers, foremen and cowboys to maintain silence while the lockout is on. They will slap anyone who utters a word, be it positive, negative or neutral with a hefty fine. How predictable.

For Jim Devellano to comment on the absolute power of the owners and the owners apparent superciliousness toward Devellano (an alternate governor), the players and the fans is not only mind blowing but truly a cry for help.

It has been reported that Devellano (and the Red Wings) have been fined $250,000.00 large for his comments. Devellano revealed that the lockout was voted on unanimously by all 30 owners, including one of the best owners in hockey, Devallano’s own boss, Mike Illich.

But just because the owners were unanimous doesn’t mean there wasn’t some arm twisting going on. Perhaps Mike Illich encouraged Devellano to do the interview and speak from his heart because Illich couldn’t.

The futility message needed to be sent to the players, employees of the organizations and the fans about how this was going to go down and how to fight it is pointless.

And it is pointless for the players. They can’t even get to the table to discuss the revenue sharing percentage rollback being demanded by the owners.

It’s September 24. What the hell is going to happen with all the changes to restricted and unrestricted free agency the owners are demanding? Revenue sharing is just the tip of a Titanic sized ice berg.

But, it isn’t pointless for the fans. Regardless of who is right or wrong, the owners or players, the fans need to walk away from the game and send the NHL a final message. After three lockouts and the loss of a full season only 7 years ago, it’s time for the fans to vote with their wallets. The fans can have a say.

Demand your season ticket money back immediately. Stop subscribing to NHL Home Ice. Do not watch hockey on NBC. If there is a Winter Classic, do not watch. Take the money you would have given to the NHL and buy your own hockey equipment. Go play the game yourself.

Or, do what Jim D said, support amateur hockey, college hockey and minor league hockey in your local communities. Screw the NHL, the greedy players and the even greedier owners. They don’t care about the fans. The fans are just atm’s with arms and legs.

And y’all thought when I said GAG Order I meant the tee times for the 71-72 Rangers Alumni Golf Tournament.

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So, here the NHL sits seven years later and not an iota wiser. What we thought could not happen again, has. The NHL has locked out their players for the third time in the last 20 years. It begs the question, isn’t it finally  time for a new league and a new Commissioner?

When the NHL last locked out the players in 2004, there was much interest to see what would happen as the lockout dragged on through what should have been an entire regular season. Unlike the lockout in 1994, the rise of the Internet gave hockey fans many venues for gleaning information.

We got “schooled up” pretty quickly on the ins and outs of collective bargaining. Labor lawyers put in their two cents across the NHL blogosphere. Every nuance of reported proposals and counter proposals by the NHL and the NHLPA were dissected. The last lockout created a fan base of armchair Walter Reuthers.

What has changed in 7 years regarding the terms of the last CBA? Didn’t the owners got what they wanted – cost certainty. They got their cap. They players rolled back their salaries. Why isn’t the CBA that  gave the owners cost certainty in 2005 still applicable in 2012?

The answer isn’t as simple as just salaries. If the terms of the last CBA were carried over to a new one, revenue sharing wise, the players would get paid much more then under the old CBA. The leagues profits are way up. Under a new CBA, the league wants to roll back that percentage so the owners can make more money. That’s understandable. The NHL isn’t a charity. The owners are in it to make money and they are entitled to make money.

What isn’t so understandable is why, in their proposed new CBA, Gary Bettman and the owners reportedly took everything off the table. Was their idea is to make the NHLPA bargain for every scrap of what they had under the old CBA? This is a typical and time tested management vs. union negotiating tactic. It’s the NHL’s attempt to break the back of this union.

The NHL now wants player eligibility for unrestricted free agency to increase to ten years from seven. They reportedly want to do away with restricted free agency entirely. They want to deny younger players the right to arbitration and to be paid fair market value for their services. The NHL wants the fan base to think it’s player greed. Far from it. It’s a play for ultimate power. This time I hope the players don’t back down.

In the back of my mind, I cannot help but think that the insulting terms of the first CBA proposal Bettman and Daly offered to Fehr and the Union smacked of vindictiveness. I can see it as a direct retaliation for the Union rejecting the proposed new league alignment aimed at resolving the Winnipeg situation. Could Bettman really be that small? That’s a rhetorical question.

When play resumed after the last lockout, they painted “Thank You Fans” on every NHL playing surface. This time they needn’t bother with that stencil. We all know it’s not sincere. If they  (and I mean the owners) really meant it, we wouldn’t be going through this again. They’d have left the UFA and RFA clauses alone and would bargain in good faith.

Maybe it’s time to “Strike the Set” or in the case if the NHL, “Strike the Stencil”. Maybe it’s time for the owners of the profitable teams to fold up their tents. Maybe it’s time to start another league where the “good” of the good owners, players and fans comes first.

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