7-15-05, 10:42 am
Not since Ronald Reagan gutted the PATCO Air Traffic Controllers has a union suffered such a high profile thrashing. After the longest labor lockout in the history of pro-sports, the National Hockey League Players Association now resembles John Ashcroft after 12 rounds with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is strutting like a peacock and the sport’s thirty billionaire owners are hailing this man who almost destroyed their sport. Meanwhile, NHL Union chief Bob Goodenow might as well be buck-naked and holding a sign that reads, 'will negotiate for food.'
As Damien Cox of the Toronto Star put it, 'Only the 30 owners can really be excited about the results of this lockout, for they have won a lopsided decision over the once-powerful players, leaving the union humiliated and divided after surrendering close to $2 billion in salaries and gaining little in return.'
The terms of surrender include a 24% pay cut across the board for every player -- guaranteed contracts be damned. But that’s not the bitterest pill. The deal also includes the one concession that the union swore it would reject: a 'hard salary cap.' Now, no NHL team can exceed $39 million in spending. For clubs that already spend more than this, players will either have to renegotiate or be cut from the team, and accept two-thirds of their salary as compensation.
Players are already breaking ranks to show their frustration. As Detroit Red wings goalie and former team union rep Manny Legace told the Associated Press, 'We lost a season for no reason. It makes no sense what we ended up doing. For years, Bob [Goodenow] was telling us, 'No cap. Owners aren't telling us the truth about their books.' Then after saying we wouldn't even consider a salary cap, he backed down on that at the last minute just before the lockout. It was too late, and now we're taking a worse deal.''
The NHL suffers from a crisis of overproduction that would make General Motors blush. Over his ten year Reign of Error, Bettman has shifted the center of his sport from Canada and the hockey-mad North to the American South. Bettman’s Sun Belt strategy of both expansion and relocation to places like Phoenix, Atlanta, Raleigh, and Tampa Bay has been a catastrophe of New Coke proportions. His effort to create 'new revenue streams' has created what can be expected when you add ice and sunshine: slush.
As sports writer Dan Wetzel put it, 'That [Bettman] was willing to risk the entire league so teams in small, non-hockey markets can limp along remains an unfathomable business choice. You pick your battles, for sure. Hockey in Atlanta is a strange one to choose. This was choosing a system that helps Carolina and Nashville, not Detroit and Toronto.'
Bettman has bet the future of hockey on failing franchises in small markets. By doing so, he has shifted the balance of power toward owners who represent the weakest clubs. The NHL is now like a Blockbuster Video that only sells Betamax. That’s why, for fans, this labor deal is so wretched. It strengthens the hand of the worst teams in the league while protecting the fundamental problem: too many teams, too many games, and too much product.
There are certainly fans and sports writers across North America saying that they are just glad that hockey has returned; that nothing is more obnoxious than seeing 'billionaires fight with millionaires.' There is certainly a grain of truth to this. But no labor fight exists in a vacuum. Every time a union suffers a brutal defeat at the hands of thirty billionaires, it affects every single one of us who has to work for a living. This is no exception. We should remember that in the future, because the battle for the soul of the NHL has only just begun.
--Dave Zirin's new book 'What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States' is in stores now! You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com. Contact him at whatsmynamefool2005@yahoo.com.
