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Hockey is dead — long live hockey

Oh hockey. Poor, sweet, ridiculous hockey… Regardless of whether you support the owners, the players, or wish both of them had to join the rest of us working nine to five for a dose of reality, it’s a shame it all had to go down this way.

Oh hockey. Poor, sweet, ridiculous hockey…

Regardless of whether you support the owners, the players, or wish both of them had to join the rest of us working nine to five for a dose of reality, it’s a shame it all had to go down this way. So close – just $6.5 million separated the $49 million salary cap the NHL Players Association originally said it would never accept, and the $42.5 million salary cap the league said was its final offer. Former player/owners Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux tried to turn the tide at the 11 th hour by splitting the difference, but even two of the greatest players ever to lace up a pair of skates couldn’t keep the game alive.

Putting that $6.5 million into perspective, the maximum size of an NHL roster is 23 players, not including farm teamers and back-ups, which means that the $6.5 million difference works out to $283,000 per player.

That’s a big pay cut – unless of course you consider that the average NHL salary was $1.8 million last year and that the players themselves were ready to agree to a 24 per cent rollback of their salaries to keep the game going this year. Twenty-four per cent of $1.8 million is $432,000.

Which is just one of the things I find strange about all this. Obviously the players, who clearly don’t trust the accounting of the owners, formed a union to represent their collective interests – not the interests of a few superstars making considerably more than the league minimum, whose rising salaries forced the owners to lock out the players.

My understanding is that the purpose of any union is to represent its least members, the rank and file employees rather than the upper echelon types that make the most money.

Incidentally, the players with the highest salaries are also the players that can afford to weather a long strike, while the players making the least are in rougher shape. Obviously those players have to be concerned about their future earning potential, but I defy you to find one Junior A player with NHL potential who would quit the game if the most they could make in a season is the league average of $1.8 million.

Obviously the star players bring in fans, and they get their teams into the playoffs where extra ticket sales and broadcast rights bring their owners more revenue. They do deserve to be paid more, and are rightly under more pressure to produce. But where do you draw the line?

The league is to blame for all of this. They started it. They expanded the league, they pumped up the player salaries, and they haven’t always been honest or played fair with their employees. They started the bidding wars on star players that pumped up league payrolls, and created a climate where teams are under pressure to re-sign star players or risk losing them to other franchises. Teams like Calgary and Tampa Bay have proved that you can’t buy a Stanley Cup, but that hasn’t stopped rich teams like New York, Toronto, Detroit and Colorado from trying to corner the market on every star free agent.

It's unfair maybe, but at the end of the day the league owners own the buildings and the franchises, and next season, if the players don’t cave, the league will probably hire replacement players to fill the void. The only recourse for the players will be to complain to various labour relations boards about the league’s union busting tactics, and perhaps try to sue teams for lost revenues. But I’m certain that most players will either retire, move to Europe, or break with the union to come back to the NHLunder the owner's terms.

The league called the players’ bluff over the salary cap, but for some reason the players still didn’t fold. They continued to gamble with a losing hand.

Advertising will be down for the next few seasons, season ticket purchases and ticket sales will be down, and the league will have to rebuild the coveted television audience. As the only professional sports league ever to cancel an entire season due to a strike – baseball pulled the plug midway through the season once costing the Expos a championship – sponsors are going to be hesitant to sign contracts.

Can fledgling franchises in the U.S., already running fifth to the NFL, NBA, MLB, poker contests and college sports, possibly survive?

The most frustrating aspect of all this is that in all this talk about cost-certainty and fair dealing, nobody has bothered to mention the fact that ticket prices are already too high, and that the average fan can’t afford to go to games anymore. Our support has been taken for granted by both sides of this battle.

The NHL and the players’ union deserve each other, and the fans deserve something better.

On the bright side, hockey lives. Junior hockey. European hockey. Street hockey.

This weekend Whistler will host the Sea to Sky Hockey Challenge, a fundraiser featuring some of the greatest players in the history of the game as well as a few celebrities to keep things interesting. Tickets are still available. For more information visit www.seatoskyhockey.com.

The Vancouver Giants (www.vancouvergiants.com) are playing their regular season, until mid-March and will probably give the fans at least one playoff series. And tickets are cheap – $20 for gold tickets right next to the action.

If you’re missing any of the estimated 400 NHL players in Europe right now, follow all the action online at www.eurohockey.net.

From coast to coast, a lot of hockey is still being played and a lot of it is still being televised. Check out TSN (www.tsn.ca), SportsNet (www.sportsnet.ca). StarChoice (www.starchoice.com) subscribers can also get Western Hockey League games.

For more information about what’s going on with the Collective Bargaining Agreement (just because the season’s dead doesn’t mean the argument is over), visit www.nhl.com. The NHL Player’s Association is at www.nhlpa.com and see for yourself how much these guys hate each other.