Another Lockout on the Horizon

As the Olympics came to a close and baseball marched into the dog days, I began to start looking forward to fall activities.  Sundays spent in crowded bars as friends and patrons guzzled beers and I scarfed down nachos while watching football.   Or weeknights bundled up in Madison Square Garden yelling "Potvin Sucks."  But it appears my angry chants may have to wait for a while.  A year removed from the NFL and NBA lockouts and seven years after the disastrous 2004-05 lockout, the NHL looks to be heading towards an impasse and this may not end up as rosy as the ones from last year.  What’s at stake?  You guessed it…MONEY!! Who’s surprised?  The owners want more of it and strangely enough so do the players.  And the players aren't kidding this time, they've brought in Don Fehr to lead the charge.

The facts are these, since the league lost the entire 04-05 season revenue is up 50% to $3.2 billion for the 2011-12 season.  And with 30 clubs the average team is worth $240 million. The NHL players have the highest minimum salary but yet the lowest highest paid player in the big four.  In fact Shea Weber at $14 million a season would be the tied with Al Jefferson for the 23^rd highest paid player in the NBA and wouldn’t even rank in the top 25 in MLB.  You could double his salary and not even reach that of Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez’s close to $30 million a season.  And if you added 65% to Weber’s yearly salary you’d equal Peyton Manning’s NFL leading $23 million which he earned standing on the sidelines in 2011.  (Not that there is anything wrong with that Peyton.)

But while the NHL may trail in average team salaries and highest paid players they are actually on par in one very key area: percentage of league revenue to player salary at about 57% (although that number fluctuates). That is one of the many items the owners are hoping to change by lowering it to 43%.  They’d also like to tack on two additional years to an entry level contract going from three to five, change the unrestricted free agent from seven to 10 years and eliminate arbitration.  Looking at baseball as a reference, once a player makes it into the majors their team owns them unilaterally for three years.  The next three years the player is arbitration eligible and after their first six years he can file for free agency.

The one major thing that sets the NHL apart from the other members of the big four is the toll the sport takes on ones body.  Think about it this way, a NHL season is made up of 72 games through the course of six months (October-April).  Sure major league baseball players are laughing because that’s less than half their season in same the amount of time.  But how many MLB players are subjected to the same piercing body blows game in and game out.  Of course Justin Morneau has suffered his share of injures (bruised lung, concussions) and Buster Posey almost lost a leg last season but when was the last time you saw baseball's top player miss practically an entire season with the effects of a concussion like Sidney Crosby did last year?  How many basketball players died during the offseason most likely due to the lasting effects of head trauma?  None you say.  Well the NHL saw two active players (Rick Rypien and Derek Boogaard) plus former player Wade Belak in 2011 alone.  This is the kind of stuff that happens in the NFL and their regular season consists of only SIXTEEN games!  And it’s not like the NHL is rushing to put an end to this like they are in the NFL, MLB and NCAA.

At the end of the day everyone loses during a lockout, except maybe Gary Bettman who would be entering his third work stopage since taking over as commissioner and he has seen his salary double since 2004. (It's now $7.98 million well shy of Bud Selig and Roger Goodell who make about $20 million but I'd be ok with it.)  The players and owners will work their hardest to make the other side look greedy and heartless while fans figure out other things to do during the winter and employees of these teams and the league pray they are not adversely effected by millionaires/billionaires going after each other. But with what looks like an impending lockout ahead, I for one hope that there is at least some hockey this year. 

Check out these two sites which put the big four in perspective:

FansEdge Graph
Plunkett Research, Inc.

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