Are there too many wishful CBA thinkers?
May 26, 2005
There are people out there in Hockeyland who want you to believe that an NHL-NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement merely has to be gift-wrapped and Fed-Exed to Bettman, Inc. for his seal of approval.
Yet, as the month of May winds to a close, the fact remains that there still is no pact and all those who proclaim -- as the Ottawa Sun has -- that the talks are “the closest they’ve been” -- are up against a wall of pessimists who assert otherwise.
The good news is that the two days of management-union meetings in Chicago on Wednesday and Thursday were productive in the sense that the two sides are still talking.
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“The most important thing is that these meetings keep happening consistently,” Lamoriello tells me, “and that there’s no time lag.”
More meetings are slated after the Memorial Day holiday with Commissioner Gary Bettman and his union counterpart Bob Goodenow facing off again. Both were absent from the Windy City conferences.
Official communiqués from each side look on the positive side.
“Further progress was made in reviewing and discussing league and club financial and accounting issues,” says the league’s chief negotiator Bill Daly.
The NHLPA’s negotiator Ted Saskin adds, “We completed two days of meetings, focused on revenue-measurement and reporting issues. There’s a lot more information to be exchanged between the parties.”
Translated into reality speak, it means that the wheels of progress are grinding as slowly as the Canarsie local but at least they are moving -- somewhat.
“But,” I’m told by a key principal in the CBA marathon, “it’s too early to tell which way we’re heading.”
The concern in many quarters is that Goodenow, whose history favors cliff-hanging negotiating, will -- as one bargainer plainly states, “try to either gas the talks, or, at the very least, slow them down.”
On the optimist side, both the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch and the Philadelphia-based Eklund Report echo encouragement.
According to Garrioch -- and others with whom I’ve talked -- Red Wings veteran Brendan Shanahan has become a major player in what some bill as a mediating force between the warring parties.
“There are a lot of players who don’t want to see this stretch into next year and don’t see any point in having it go into next year,” The Sun quotes from a “league source.”
Another team vice-president, Jimmy Devellano of the Red Wings, shares the “show-me-there’s-a-deal-before-I’ll-believe-it” philosophy.
In an interview with the Windsor Star’s Dave Waddell, Devellano questions how much “progress has been made.”
While describing his mood as “hopeful,” he also points out a significant fact.
“Do you hear Goodenow saying ‘We’re close to an agreement?’ Or that he’s, 'happy with the progress being made?' I’ve never heard it.
“Why should we be hopeful when only one side is saying it? It’s going to take two sides to make this deal.
“I don’t sense that (negotiating environment) has changed. Don’t get excited until you hear both parties saying we’re closing in on a deal.”
In its message, The Eklund Report also echoes the encouraging theme with the league winning on its “linkage” demand while the players would gain concessions in areas such as Free Agency.
It has been suggested that the age of Free Agency could be dropped to 30 next season and then moved again to 28.
But two respected team officials with whom I talked on Thursday were considerably less sanguine about CBA progress.
“They’ve got a long, long way to go,” one of the club vice-presidents confides. “They’re just doing the basic stuff now and haven’t even gotten to systemic issues such as arbitration and the sanctioning of agents.”
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“After that ‘stupid Saturday’ in February, nobody will believe there’s a deal until it actually happens. How can we have any faith in a deal with all the delays we’ve seen over the months?”
The slow pace orchestrated by the union baffles experts familiar with labor negotiation.
Rangers season ticket-holder Philip R. Hoffman of the Manhattan law firm, Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn is one analyst who fails to understand union strategy.
“The union put itself in a ridiculous negotiating position when it stated that it would never accept a Salary Cap,” Hoffman tells me. “In negotiations, you never say ‘Never.’
“What the NHLPA should have done last year was accept a Cap and put it at $100 million and negotiate from there. Instead they said the Cap was ‘a matter of principle’ and then they suddenly changed their mind.”
A veteran of sports litigation -- he has represented coaches and players -- Hoffman believes that the longer the players fail to sign a new CBA, the worse it will get for them.
“Their careers are disappearing in front of them,” Hoffman explains. “It’s total self-destruction. If they think they’ll get a better deal next September, they’re mistaken. The owners will not cave.”
The bottom line is this: skeptics argue that there is plenty of work to do and they believe that no deal is possible within the next week or two or three.
Optimists contend that the moderating "official" statements being uttered by both sides are merely a cover and -- as one insider puts it -- “maybe a lot has been going on in a positive way and we don’t know it.”
My conclusion: we should be so lucky.
Have a good weekend -- by not thinking too much about the CBA!
