November 28, 2004
Reading The Tea Leaves In Lockout Pay
One of the oldest media relations tricks in the book, and one reporters don't appreciate, is when an organization releases some sort of news backed up against a holiday weekend. So when I tripped over the news that the NHLPA had started distributing lockout pay to its members, a story that hit the AP wire late on Wednesday afternoon the day before Thanksgiving, I was curious.
Luckily, they celebrate Thanksgiving in October North of the border, so everybody was at work on Thursday in Canada to dig out all the details of the plan. Click here for the details of the plan from Canada's Sportsnet -- a deal that will gross eligible players between $5,000 and $10,000 per month depending on service time (and some will get their payments tax free). That's not exactly much compared to what they would be making if the league was operating:
The average salary of an NHL player was $1.8 million last season, which worked out to about $138,000 per paycheque. That translates into about $1.31 billion for the season -- or about $1.1 billion from November on.
Players have missed three paycheques to date.
Using the average salary, an NHL player would normally make about $277,000 per month during the regular season. Lockout pay of $10,000 a month equals some 3.6 per cent of that amount.
The NHL minimum salary was officially $180,000 last season -- or about $27,700 a month during the regular season -- although it is rare a player makes it.
That's one heck of a pay cut, and it would seem to indicate that ESPN's John Buccigross has a real point when he writes that the pressure is rising right now:
Keep in the mind we are now approaching the reckoning phase of the NHL lockout. After Thanksgiving is when the stress levels will go through the roof. Agents will be coaxing players since they are not collecting fees. Wives will be nagging players because the holiday season is approaching. Owners who sell out all their games will be reminding Gary Bettman about all their lost revenue.
After Thanksgiving, things will move quickly. The players will make a proposal, the owners will counter and the season will hang in the balance as the players decide to accept the owners' final offer.
Then again, owners who aren't selling out their arenas, and there are enough of them to block any new labor agreement with the players, aren't hurting nearly as much:
But [Washington Caps owners Ted] Leonsis, who owns slightly more than 40 percent of Washington Sports, says he is losing less money by not playing hockey under the old labor agreement this year than he would be if the Capitals were on the ice. Leonsis says he will lose around $10 million if the season is canceled, about a third of what he lost a year ago. And the losses are being absorbed by a prepaid, $10 million lockout fund that the Capitals -- along with each other NHL club -- set aside in anticipation of the labor strife.
On the other hand, Leonsis has a minority stake in Washington Sports and Entertainment, the umbrella business that owns the MCI Center, the Washington Wizards and Washington Mystics. And without the Caps playing, Washington Sports is losing some serious revenue.
I'd like to believe this means we'll be looking at some kind of agreement in the next few weeks -- but something tells me neither side believes they've extracted their pound of flesh from the opposition as of yet.
In 1995, the lockout was finally settled in January. If we do get some sort of season, we've probably got at least another few weeks to wait before it happens.
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This might make me weird, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for a man who voluntarily shells out huge contracts he can't cover and then blames player costs for not making a profit. Yeah, I'm sure you aren't losing as much by not playing Ted - and that's why I can't stand you and your ilk. You run businesses into the ground through poor management and then you blame the people who make your business possible for your mistakes. You and Peter Karmanos should be forced to sell your teams to people who have half a clue how to manage a team - hell, a business of any sort, for that matter. The basic lesson that you don't buy things you can't pay for is one you apparently never learned, and you deserve to be punished for it.
There are a lot of problems in the NHL, but the attitude that some owners take - that they deserve to make a profit simply because they bought a team - stands above the rest, for me, as a display of pure arrogance and contempt. Add corporate ownership of franchises to the mix and you've got a horrendous mess that's not going to get fixed anytime soon. I've given up hope on this season. I've given up hope that my Predators - the scrappy team that can knock off a team with 3X the payroll through hard work and determination - will ever be seen on the Nashville ice again. The team I'll get in return might be wearing the same uniform, but they'll be just like every other team in the league. What a horrible, horrible thought.
Posted by:
at December 2, 2004 12:24 PM
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01:28 PM