PowerPlay Magazine

As another season of PPM hockey winds down it's somewhat disheartening that we are very likely not winding up for another season of NHL hockey. As the agreement proposals submitted to each camp proved to be substantially incompatible the likelihood of a lockout of the players by the owners come September 15 is steadily approaching a certainty. No one can know what Bettman and Fehr ultimately will settle on for a deal but seeing as that no matter how the whole ordeal plays out it's virtually impossible for us fans of NHL hockey to “win” in this contest I would like to declare whose side I support:

The players.

It should be said that even if the players were to have somehow, against all expectation, accept the initial offer from the owners they would be more than adequately paid for their labours, with all the perks, benefits, financial security and contractual freedoms most of us can only dream of. For me the issue isn't about money, it's about principle. Last time around we saw Bettman arguing the league couldn't make money. However truthful that may be Forbes magazine has done an admirable job documenting the dramatic increase in revenues, franchise values and profits since then. Bettman deserves his share of the accolades for this turn of events, particularly in light of a tumultuous and stagnating overall economy, but to take the intial offer tabled to the players without knowing this context one would assume the previous tailspin was ongoing, if not worsening.

There are obviously legitimate issues to be tabled and solved between these two camps. One must also accept that both sides will try to negotiate towards the biggest slice of the revenue pie as possible. But Bettman fails to see how his almost laser-like focus on profitability for the owners is not just offputting for the fans, as if he could ignore all the boo's he inspires, but unbecoming of a commissioner. By tabling a collective bargaining proposal that does too little to address the structural problems of the league but instead focuses largely on grabbing more of the revenue pie we see exactly where Bettman's motivations lie: greater shareholder/franchise owner value at the expense of everyone and everything else.

Hockey fans are a subset of the general public, a public who has watched in stunned amazement the recent financial crisis, lost jobs and homes, recoiled in disgust at the revelations of endemic financial fraud and rampant greed, and then made to shoulder the bailouts to prop-up those very same ne'er-do-wells who precipitated the crisis in the first place. Hockey has grown and remained largely profitable during this time of turmoil mostly as a palliative for fans against these confronting facts. When Bettman essentially asks the players to again accept that the league owners are not earning enough profit, he is not only ignoring facts, he is reminding the savvy fan of the bottomless greed and careless fraud committed at the centre of the global financial crisis by all-too-similar (and sometimes the very same) insulated 1 percent. When Bettman threatens the possibility of a lockout, he not only thumbs his nose at the fan, he belittles their recent hardships and sacrifices.

A commissioner is the head administrator and ideally the caretaker of an organization. A true NHL caretaker would not treat hockey players as little more than a cost to be controlled and ratcheted further down, and fans as little more than cash-cows to be milked at their convenience. Had it been the players who were to first submit such an insulting collective bargaining proposal I might've sided with the owners. However it was Bettman, unsurprisingly true to the signers of his paycheque, signers who have much more in common with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley than they do with Conn Smythe and Lester Patrick, who first reminded everyone what really matters here.