*Official* CBA Negotiations and Lockout Thread

[Smashian Kassian]

Decertification is the players nuclear card

[Rey]

The mention of origin came solely from your comments and is irrelevant to my opinion.

Neuvirth and Hamrlik may be great buds, but Neuvirth had nothing to do with anything going on in the Habs lockeroom. He also has nothing to do with my opinion. And whatever Neuvirth said is his opinion. Does Neuvirth's opinion about every player in the league define whether they are right or wrong about anything?

You saying that someone's opinion is flawed makes as much sense as you trying to pass off your opinion as fact.

I claimed everything before to be my opinion. As far as truth goes, its 100% true that it is my opinion.

Taking into account my points above, it is also 100% true that its my opinion that your credibility is nonexistent.

EDIT: To top that off, you post a link to a thread in another forum as though the kids arguing there will somehow change my opinion. It appears there is much for you to learn in life. Good luck with that.

[The Bookie]

from yesterday's LA Times:

NHL rejection could lead union to decertify

The NHL on Wednesday turned down a five-year labor agreement proposed by the NHL Players' Assn., moving to the brink of losing December games and its All-Star festivities. Commissioner Gary Bettman, who has canceled games through Nov. 30 as well as the Jan. 1 Winter Classic, said the league's daily losses of $18 million to $20 million will affect its bargaining strategy.

"Any expectation that the offer is going to get better as time goes on is unrealistic," Bettman told reporters in New York.

The rejection, announced after the sides met twice at the league's headquarters, might spur the NHLPA to begin the decertification process, according to several people with knowledge of the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Decertification of the union — a strategy employed by the NFLPlayers' Assn. when it was locked out by the NFL in 2011 — would mean the NHLPA would no longer be the players' bargaining agent. Individual players could invoke antitrust laws and ask a federal court to end the lockout or sue the league for unfair business practices that are otherwise protected by a union-league relationship.

Ten NFL players, led by New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, sued their league last year. The case was settled when their labor dispute was resolved. The NFLPA had been reclassified as a trade union but was recertified to negotiate benefits in the new collective bargaining agreement.

The decertification option is rarely invoked because it's time-consuming and complex. An NHLPA spokesman declined to comment on the union's potential next steps.

[The Bookie]

Decertification is the players nuclear card

[thad]

My understanding is that decertification would free the players up to start launching individual lawsuits against the league and the owners through antitrust. From what I've read it's very complicated and messy and would be somewhat groundbreaking in how it relates to labour laws; both the NFL and NBA began the process in their respective lockouts, and in both cases an agreement was hastily reached, so it is likely Fehr's backup plan. I'm not sure that the players are going to be anxious to go that route. Could be interesting but I'd personally rather they find an agreement without it.

[The Bookie]

thad - This is from the LA Times quote I posted above:

Individual players could invoke antitrust laws and ask a federal court to end thelockout or sue the league for unfair business practices that are otherwise protected by a union-league relationship.

[Provost]

Edit.. I liked the one idea in here better. I think it was provost's but can't remember. But for the PA to put a deadline in December for a deal to be reached before they will not negotiate for this season anymore and the remaining players in NA can go overseas and not be obligated to return untill next season

[gizmo2337]

Decertification is the players nuclear card

[oldnews]

The numbers from what 3rd party sources have gleaned are that the players and owners are currently splitting total revenue about 50/50 (maybe 49/51 in the player's favour). But the owners get to deduct a bunch of expenses before calculating hockey related revenue. Bettman has misled people by suggesting that the owners have been having to run their businesses with 43% of the take under the last agreement.

[boxiebrown]

Are you really not able to compute that if the UFA age was raised by a year Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg would be able to hold on to their players for another year?

[The Bookie]

Montreal, where sports are now dead

Last weekend, Montreal played host to a dramatic UFC fight and a CFL conference championship. Normally, attention would turn to the Habs. This is what it looks like when sports leave a city entirely.

There is no hockey in Montreal. For 24 hours or so last weekend, it didn't seem to matter so much. Saturday night, the thoroughly likable Georges St-Pierre defended his UFC welterweight title at the Bell Centre, and it must be understood: St-Pierre, a native Quebecer, has achieved sainthood in this city. Local sports heroes abound on this continent, but in the eighteen months since St-Pierre last fought, most of these heroes have competed for 50 to 250 to 500 hours. This man, and these people, had 30 minutes.

A few blocks away, I watched the fight in a bar. I was emotionally invested, but was also the least emotionally-invested person present, and so I was free to break away from the screen and watch the faces in the room. In the third round, Carlos Condit wrecked St-Pierre's momentum with a head kick that sent him to the mat. Silence, aside from a few hushed utterances that were probably French if they were any tongue at all. I think, for a moment, that I saw St-Pierre's eyes flutter and roll as he struggled to guard. Some watched with their mouths covered, others buried their faces in their hands entirely.

St-Pierre endured, found his feet, and won by unanimous decision. Some of those around me hugged and cheered; others simply sat, relieved. The fellow sitting across the table was blunt: "I was worried. I was ... very, very worried." And that was that, for this fighter and these folks, for what is sure to be a year or so.

That was beautiful, but it was not strange. The next day was profoundly strange for an American football fan: Julie and I took the Metro to Olympic Stadium, where the Montreal Alouettes hosted the Toronto Argonauts for the CFL's analogue to the AFC Championship Game. Like St-Pierre, the Alouettes, winners of two of the last three Grey Cups, entered as consensus favorites.

Stade olympique does not, and could not possibly, exist in the United States.

From a distance it's terribly impressive; the giant fin-like apparatus that hangs above helps it to resemble a docked extraterrestrial cruiser in a way other domes do not. Inside, it is 1988. The yellow metal seats clack up and down without resistance, and regulars are fond of standing half-upright and using them as noisemakers.

It feels like an enormous unfinished basement. The frame is concrete-upon-concrete, and the light structures are checkered with lamps dimmer and more yellowed than others. The simple, monochrome scoreboards are surely decades old, and sport the occasional dead lamps -- when they displayed, "SHHHH ..." during Montreal's offensive drives, it resembled, "SHGHH ...," and this idiot American initially reasoned that this was simply how Francophones said it. Where the Expos' center-field wall used to stand, there is now a giant black curtain. It looks just like a batter's eye. As I look at that photo now, I receive this image of the stadium waiting, as long as it takes, for Tim Raines to step into the box.

The score of the game wriggled into the oddest contortions -- 10-3, 10-4, 10-6 -- before neatly collapsing into a 27-20 final that at last felt familiar to me. And so did the end. Lord God, so did the end. Forty-year-old quarterback Anthony Calvillo, who has played for Montreal since before the turn of the century, needed a touchdown in the final minute. On the third and final down, he spotted receiver Brian Bratton deep in this cavernous end zone.

The ball knocked off Bratton's hands with an almost cruel flourish, high enough for everyone to see, no matter the line-of-sight. "AAAAUUUUGH," said 51,000 people, exactly once, and then it was dead.

As I walked with Julie back to the Metro, she said, "that was it. There are no sports. Those were all the sports."

She had little interest in speculating when the NHL lockout, a miserable, sputtering machine of inept bickering and not-news, would end. In any other year, the season of Montreal's beloved Habs would be over a month old.

We have always dodged this fate in America. When baseball players struck in 1994, they at least did so when the NFL season was near. Disaster loomed in 2011, when NFL and NBA owners imposed lockouts, but full -- or mostly-full -- seasons came to pass.

But as of this week, Montreal is a sports-obsessed metropolis with zero sports. I can't imagine it. I don't know what you or I would do if all our sports left in lockstep. And I can't glean any more than a second-hand account of how it feels for such a dramatic 24 hours to be followed by an indefinite void.

Two fantastic episodes comprised this unacceptable finale -- one part dramatic victory, one part needlessly cruel defeat. Those were your sports, Montreal, in their most vivid, bleeding hues, and they were tremendous. Were. They've left, perhaps for quite a long time. I hope they haven't broken your heart.

[The Bookie]

DP

[-Vintage Canuck-]

Brouwer frustrated by Hamrlik, Neuvirth comments:

Whenever the National Hockey League lockout ends, there could be some interesting words exchanged in the Washington Capitals' locker room.

According to the Washington Post, Troy Brouwer, one of the Capitals' two player representatives to the union, was frustrated by the recent comments made by his teammates about the NHLPA and the current lockout.

Within a two-day span, defenceman Roman Hamrlik spoke out against the NHLPA's negotiations and goaltender Michal Neuvirth stated that the lockout was more about "several superstars with big contracts," than the rest of the players.

Brouwer took exception to those comments.

"Those are two guys that have never been on a conference call, never been to a meeting, never paid attention," Brouwer told The Post. "People are going to have their own opinions but when you're fighting for something with 700 other guys, all you're doing is just making it harder to make a deal and making it harder to accomplish the things we're fighting for.

"For me, I think those guys selling us out, being selfish like that and making those comments..." Brouwer continued. "Me being on their team, how am I going to trust them as a teammate from now on? Because you know they're not going to support players in the big scheme of things when you go and you play on the team with them; it's going to be tough to want to back those guys from now on."

Despite the comments from both Hamrlik and Neuvirth, Brouwer told the Post that the NHLPA remained a solid unit.

"It's frustrating as players having other players come out and say this but we still as a core are very strong," Brouwer said. "We still believe the same things. We stand by the proposal that we made (Wednesday) and nothing's going to change."

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=410109

[Boudrias]

There is definitely a sense in all the NHLPA proposals that puts the onus on the owners to actually grow the game... Fehr even said outright "we don't decide where to put franchises, that is not our job". I agree that there is no reason for the players to have to subsidize the league making poor business decisions.

If the league moved the bottom couple of franchises to higher revenue places (Quebec, Southern Ontario, Seattle, Vegas, Kansas City, etc) then there is a bigger pie for everyone to share. I don't buy the "U.S. national TV audience" argument because it doesn't explain why you need two team in Florida, three teams in the New York area, 3 teams in California, but have none in many other regions.

[Boudrias]

I agree. At his age Washington overpaid him at 3.5 per. He has one year left on that contract, after which he'd be lucky to be making 2, let alone being signed at all (should he decline further).

It's purely selfish. Roman just wants his money before he leaves the league. "Who cares what is happening in a year or two? I'll be long gone." This is depite him making over 25 million in just the last 5 years (for fairly average play).

I don't blame Cole - who has many years left in this league - for wanting to tell Hamrlik off.

[Boudrias]

I can't say for sure why they asked for it. My guess would be it's simply a tiny bit of security for players.

The players' offer accounts for a drop in revenue caused by the lockout, just not for any drop after revenue begins to grow again. Again, maybe revenues will go down later, but there is no proof that is true. I couldn't find any proof that it's ever happened and it certainly never did under the last CBA despite a major worldwide economic recession.

As for the "partnership" argument, I don't necessarily disagree with you, but the NHL obviously does. Their behavior and words during this CBA negotiation make it clear the NHL views players as nothing more than employees. If that's the case, why should those employees bear equal risk?

[Boudrias]

There is no way the NHL could simply replace the players, for both fan, sponsorship, and legal reasons.

Go look at major junior, AHL, or college hockey... very high level game but can hardly draw flies even with $8 tickets. There is no way you can just transplant those players into NHL arenas and have people decide they want to shell out $500 for a night out or millions for a corporate box. Revenues and attendance would tank, the broadcast deals would go away, they would lose the rights to the Stanley Cup (which is not owned by the NHL), their franchise values would plummet drastically... and you are still left with a few hundred elite hockey players who could be hosting their own games in their own contracted league which would be playing a higher level of hockey.

On the legal side it would be virtually impossible to use replacement players as I noted in a post a couple pages ago. Many jurisdictions (including BC) have laws against using replacement employees in the case of LR work stoppages. Even fighting it in court hoping for a positive decision to allow it would take years.

[Boudrias]

This might be a total aside the theme of what brought about this post, but it brings up a couple of questions:

- Do you think NHL players are the best hockey players on average in the world?

- Where do you think the replacement players would come from?

- What level would you put those players on overall when compared to current NHL teams?

- How much (compared to a current "NHL dollar") do you think fans would spend on ticket prices, jerseys, etc.?

- Even if your guess (from a later post) is that 50% or more of current NHL'ers would jump ship, how many of those would be from the top half in talent?

If a fair number of players wanted to "jump ship" and return to play regardless of a CBA, what would stop the NHLPA from decertifying and filing legal action against the league to negotiate a new CBA through the courts? Why wouldn't the players have just caved and accepted a deal already if a clear majority wanted it?

This pretty much explains it. the NHLPA did the same in the last CBA. They were actually given 54% as the player's share of HRR but the NHL agreed to a clause that if revenues grew beyond a certain amount each year, the HRR share would increase for the players to 57% - which of course it did due to record revenues.

Yes, they did. I posted it earlier and they had the worst attendance in the NHL yet they still managed to outdo the KHL attendance record from this season (with NHL'ers like Ovi and Chara playing) 5 times in the regular season last year.

[Dogbyte]

Good job by Hamrlik today.

He's right about Cole, who has his signing bonus in the pocket already. He doesn't need to play this season since he's gotten $5m in signing bonuses the last two seasons.

[Boudrias]

My understanding is that decertification would free the players up to start launching individual lawsuits against the league and the owners through antitrust. From what I've read it's very complicated and messy and would be somewhat groundbreaking in how it relates to labour laws; both the NFL and NBA began the process in their respective lockouts, and in both cases an agreement was hastily reached, so it is likely Fehr's backup plan. I'm not sure that the players are going to be anxious to go that route. Could be interesting but I'd personally rather they find an agreement without it.