New kid on the blog

Welcome to my friend Mike, aka, MrSpeed. Unfortunately for the rest of us, this will mean posts about the Devils, Mets, and Cowboys. Who invited this guy?

Optimism doesn’t live here anymore

The Sports Network of Canada is reporting that the National Hockey League will flatly reject the latest proposal from the NHL Players’ Association, and instead make a counteroffer that continues the owners’ demand for “cost certainty.” TSN has obtained a copy of a confidential memorandum sent by the NHL to all 30 teams that delineates the NHL’s reaction to the Players’ Association’s proposal from last Thursday. "In sum, we believe the Union's December 9 CBA proposal, while offering necessary and significant short-term financial relief, falls well short of providing the fundamental systemic changes that are required to ensure that overall League economics remain in synch on a going-forward basis," NHL executive vice president Bill Daly wrote in the Dec. 12 memo which went to all governors and alternative governors, including many NHL general managers. "While the immediate 'rollback' of 24 per cent offered by the Union would materially improve League economics for the 2004-05 season, there is virtually nothing in the Union's proposal that would prevent the dollars 'saved' from being re-directed right back into the player compensation system, such that the League's overall financial losses would approach current levels in only a matter of a couple of years." The memo reiterated NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's intention to provide a counter-proposal to the NHLPA at a 1 p.m. meeting on Tuesday in Toronto. The memo said the counter proposal "will be an appropriate response to the Union's offer and will ensure the League's future stability and long-term health." In other words, the counter-proposal is likely to contain "cost certainty" or a linkage between salaries and revenues, which the NHLPA sees as a "salary cap" and a non-starter for negotiations. "It would not assist the collective bargaining process to comment on excerpts from a leaked league document. We will comment on the NHL's response to our proposal when it is finally delivered to us on Tuesday," said NHLPA Senior Director Ted Saskin in a statement Tuesday. This is a crushing blow after the encouraging signs that came out of last week’s bargaining session. The season is now days away from being cancelled. The timeline is quite clear: tomorrow afternoon, the NHL will make a proposal to the Players’ Association that includes significant salary rollbacks for all players making in excess of $6 million per year, along with a hard cap of $35 million; either immediately or shortly thereafter, the NHLPA will reject the NHL’s proposal and break off negotiations; the NHL, by the end of the week, will cancel the rest of the season; next September, the NHL will bring in replacement players to fill training camps, hoping that a significant number of bottom-salaried players break ranks with the union and become scabs -- leading to the union crumbling and allowing the NHL to unilaterally implement a new CBA that includes a hard salary cap. It’s very clear now that the owners’ goal all along has been to break the players’ union. They couldn’t care less about playing this season, a salary cap, a luxury tax, salary cuts, rookie contracts, salary arbitration -- nor the fans. All of these issues, even combined, are way too small to cancel an entire season over. The union is the big prize here, and the owners have their eyes clearly fixed on it. Looks like it won’t be a merry Christmas after all.

It's a start

That's about all that can be said for the new proposal from the NHL Players' Association presented to the owners yesterday. The biggest splash was the news that the proposal contained an immediate 24% rollback on player salaries. The proposal also contained lower limits on entry level salaries and bonuses, a revamped arbitration process, the creation of an NFL-esque competition committee -- an idea also floated at Brendan Shanahan's summit on game-improvement, an offer to participate in the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics, and a dreaded luxury tax. SALARY ROLLBACK: A huge concession from the players -- their last proposal called for a rollback between 5 and 10 % -- is a great idea. This will immediately drop the salaries on all existing contracts, and force future free agents to negotiate from a much lower starting point than they do now. ENTRY LEVEL SALARIES: This offer drops the limit on entry level salaries from $1.295 million to $850,000. I think this is fine, but I find it very interesting that players are willing to cap salaries for rookies but not for veterans. ARBITRATION: The current arbitration process calls for a player to make a proposal and his team to make a proposal and then allows for the arbiter to award any amount he or she feels is just. Under the new proposal, this system would be more akin to baseball where the player and the team each submit a number and the arbiter chooses one of those numbers. Again, I think this offer is fine. COMPETITION COMMITTEE: Under the current CBA, rule changes are proposed by GMs to the owners and implemented unilaterally by the owners. In the new offer, a competition committee would be created that is comprised of both players and club representatives that would be in charge of recommending rule changes to the league and would also seek to improve the league's marketing and revenues. I love this idea. To me, it makes no sense that the people who play the game have no say in how the game is played. OLYMPICS: I hate this idea, simply for the fact that it undermines the very idea of what the Olympics are supposed to be about -- amateurs and not professionals. Perhaps I'm living in a different time, but I would rather see a bunch of college kids and junior players playing than NHLers. It's not enough that they make all the money, but they have to take away some kid's dream of representing his country as well? LUXURY TAX: The players' offer calls for a starting threshold of $45 million, with a 20% tax imposed on those clubs that spend between $45 million and $50 million. If a club is over the limit two years in a row, in the second year the tax increases to 25%. If it's three years in a row, then the tax goes to 30%. Those teams that spend between $50 million and $60 million will be taxed at a 50% rate in the first year, with a five percent increase again in the second and third consecutive years. The teams that spend more than $60 million on payroll will be hit with a 60% tax, with -- again -- a five percent increase in the second and third consecutive years. Also included in this is a revenue sharing provision that calls for the bottom 15 teams in revenue to receive enough money to bring them within 30% of the revenue of the top 15 teams. I think this is an area that can be worked on and improved, but as it stands right now is unacceptable. The threshold needs to be much lower -- considering that the owners wanted the hard cap limit set at $31 million -- and the penalties much stiffer. If you set the original threshold at say $35 million, with a starting tax of 50%, and increase the amount of tax -- by more than 5% -- for every year a team is over the limit, I think you have an offer that the owners may be able to live with. Throw in a minimum amount of money -- say, $20 million or so -- that all teams must spend on revenue and I think you have an offer that the players can live with. (If a team does not spend the minimum amount on player salaries, they will be fined some monetary amount and/or be forced to forfeit future draft picks.) Keep the revenue sharing plan the same as in the offer the players made, and you just may have a deal that both sides can live with. Here's hoping that the owners take a serious look at the offer over the weekend and come up with a counterproposal that is genuinely aimed at getting back on the ice as soon as possible. All indications are that talks will continue on Tuesday, with the owners presenting their counterproposal at that time. Keep your fingers crossed. For the entire proposal, click here for a PDF file on the NHLPA web site. (Note: I have been having trouble opening this.)

Speaking Volumes

This is the entire text from an e-mail I received from my friend Vinnie: Jon Lieber, Randy Wolf, Vicente Padilla, Brett Myers and Cory Lidle. They may as well just give us the World Series with that rotation.

This just in . . .

From the "It's About Damn Time" department comes this news flash from the Associated Press: The NHL accepted an invitation from the players' association on Thursday to return to the negotiating table in an effort to end the lockout that began nearly three months ago. In a letter sent to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman on Thursday, players' association executive director Bob Goodenow proposed that the sides meet next week in Toronto and said the union is working on a new proposal. No official talks have occurred since Sept. 9, when the union made its last offer. The lockout reached its 78th day Thursday. "We look forward to meeting with the NHL Players' Association next week," said Bill Daly, the league's chief legal officer. "We are hopeful that the NHLPA's offer will be a meaningful effort to address the league's economic problems. When we receive the proposal, we will evaluate it closely and respond appropriately." I'm doing my best not to get my hopes up, but damn if this isn't just a little bit exciting. Perhaps there is a Santa Claus after all.

This is a joke, right?

I received an e-mail from someone in the Phillies Sales Department yesterday informing me that the cost of my partial season ticket package would be increasing -- from $20.00 per ticket to $27.50 per ticket. When I first read it, I didn't really think much of it. I forwarded the note along to my brother -- with whom I share the seats -- and then went to bed. With a bunch of other things on my mind, I can't say I thought much about it when I woke this morning, either. Then I came in to work and talked to my brother. He was . . . a little salty, shall I say? The more I'm think about it, the more it bothers me, too. Here's a team that hasn't made the playoffs in eleven seasons, a team that has publicly announced they will be decreasing their payroll this season, a team that did not pay for a good chunk of the new ballpark that they own, a team that is the very definition of the word futile . . . and they tell me that I have to pay almost 40% more for the same product?! Tom's conclusion is dead on -- it's a wonder this team has won even one World Series.