Collective Puck Dropping

It’s October 11, 2012. The NHL’s 2012-13 regular season was supposed to start today. Instead, the league’s 30 arenas are dark and fans are taking their money and allegiances elsewhere.

Me? I’m just as happy to watch NBA games, especially those involving the Toronto Raptors, LA Lakers and Chicago Bulls. Big-time basketball is the definition of athleticism, strength and hand-eye coordination.

Plus, I will head down to the my local arena and catch a minor league game. For about a tenth of what I’d have to pay to see a hyped-up laser show and smoke machine laden NHL contest. Are WHL games one tenth as entertaining or do they feature just a tenth the speed and skill of what the NHL features? Of course not.

As for the NHL shutdown, the point that has only been coherently explained in the last two weeks is this: the profitable teams (lets say there are about 14) and ultra-profitable teams (about 5) refuse to fully subsidize Bettman's raft of weak franchises (at least 10.) They've basically said, "if your operations are losing money hand over foot, too bad. We’re doing just fine and see no reason to prop you up."

The real solution that none of these irrational idiots will even consider is contraction and relocation. The NHL might be able to survive and prosper with about 24 teams. Toronto is ripe for a second club. Quebec City, Hamilton and Seattle make far more sense than Phoenix, Dallas, Tampa Bay, Florida and Columbus ever did.

I was down in Tampa Bay a couple of years ago when Vinny Lecalvalier was making $10-million a season, and 4 tickets, food, drinks and parking cost about $60. The math didn't work then and even with league revenue growth and richer TV contracts, it still doesn't in the majority of cities where Bettman & Co. have decided to set up shop. Never will. No matter how long that team stays in central Florida, the sport itself will remain niche.

Even though most of us (including the players themselves) know that NHL-level players are paid far too much for what they actually do, it's not their fault that the NHL, under Bettman, has decided to enter regions that just won't support hockey. I mean, a sane business model would locate franchises where there's a base and tradition. Even some major Europe cities would be better bets than Florida.

NHL team owners are a rich, egomaniacal, narcissistic lot, who will charge the highest the market can stand. Hey, thats business. That's capitalism. In Toronto, forking out $300 for an authentic Maple Leafs jersey or $600 for a Maple Leafs leather jacket happens everyday. Not so much in Tampa Bay or Miami or Dallas.

Still, for Bettman (at the behest of a handful of profitable and influential teams) to try to repair all his (their) mistakes in one fell swoop is shear lunacy. But then again, it's how tyrants and oligarchs have always run their affairs. 

One solution the rich teams might embrace would be to copy English Football, in which a set number of positions are set aside for a 'Premier' Division (say 16), two teams are relegated each year to the division below (First Division) and two are elevated. Second Division (AHL) and Third Division (ECHL) teams would be in the same boat. Top two elevated, bottom two relegated. 

So, for example, the Winnipeg Jets might start a season in the Premier Division, but drop to the wrung below because of poor performance. As a First Division participant the next year, fans would get to see all new teams with the hope and aspiration of getting back to the top step on the ladder. It seems to have worked out well in the UK and Europe, why not North America and the NHL?

Yes, I know that is unlikely to happen. NHL brass can only focus on one thing at a time, and right now it's saving themselves by breaking their most important staffers, the players. 

So here’s to B-ball and the first regular season NBA tipoff.

Irrational

My cerebral exercise in futility is beginning to rear its unattractive noggin once again, as the never-ending U-S election season nears its climax. 

In a clear effort to debunk all the 'peace' chatter from President Barrack Obama and others, the U-S military industrial complex is ramping up disinformation and outright fictional scenarios to promote the lucrative business of conflict. Yes, war (who would have guessed) is hugely profitable for the business community. Iran has been conveniently chosen to play the part of evildoer that is a threat to world peace and the survival of freedom and liberty everywhere.

For about four years now we have been inundated with warnings that Iran's theocracy is on a suicide mission; that it will gladly martyr perhaps hundreds of millions of people, just to prove to the world that the Zionists who run Israel should be destroyed. 

This is laughable. It's as if Hollywood cartoons are the template for U-S foreign policy. 

Yet serious and otherwise intelligent people offer the argument that it would be the worst thing ever for Iran to have nuclear weaponry. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's feverish rhetoric, during the home stretch of the U-S presidential campaign, that the world (read U-S-A) must draw a 'red line' in the sand is only inflaming an already burning region of the world and feeding the ravenous military-industrial monster.

This brings us to a little bit of recent history and the arguments that real western statesmen have made - that 'containment' is better than war; that 'containment' or 'deterrence' helps prevent war; that rational governments avoid war.

The Soviet Union held off western attempts to inflict democracy on its empire by developing a massive, sophisticated nuclear arsenal. One atomic bomb can kill tens of thousands of people and raze a large area in a flash. The USSR built 4,000 to 6,000 nuclear bombs and placed them in strategic regions of its sprawling sphere of influence and domination. The Soviet's rush to militarism might have seemed insane and dangerous at the time, but it was perfectly rational. It was a clear defense mechanism that did it's job. No nation ever launched a nuclear attack on the USSR and it, being mostly rational, never did either. 

Still, the pro-war lobby is drowning out those pragmatic historians who know that if two nations have the capability to destroy one another, chances are there will be a productive, non-military relationship, if not actual peace. 

From all I've read (much of it between the lines) Iran just wants to be left alone. It has not started a war, despite some threatening rhetoric from one or two of its politicians. It has been invaded, by neighbouring Iraq and its U-S-armed leader Saddam Hussein. More than a million Iranians were killed in the 8-year conflict. 

So there's absolutely no evidence that Iran has imperialist ambitions to swallow up its neighbours. Influence? Certainly. It is large and a key nation in a volatile region, but it also a student of history and, thus, realizes that expansionist, military aggression is bound to fail (see Hitler and the Third Reich.). Thus, there's really nothing to 'contain', as in the U-S hawks' clarion call that 'Iran must be contained'.  

Containment was the watch-word of western allies in dealing with the Soviet Union and communism. It was a much better option than launching a military, or even nuclear, strike. Eventually the weight of its own ineffectiveness crushed the Soviet system.

Deterrence is a different story, even though I would argue that it's also the wrong term to use regarding Iran. And deterrence works both ways.

Who's to say that Iran could be developing a nuclear arsenal to 'deter' Israel and others with nuclear weaponry from attacking it? In fact, if Teheran is building atomic weapons (the Ayatollahs say they are not, that it is anti-Islamic) it would make potential warmongering invaders think twice.

As Bill Keller asked in a recent New York Times article, "If the U.S. arsenal deterred the Soviet Union for decades of cold war and now keeps North Korea’s nukes in their silos, if India and Pakistan have kept each other in a nuclear stalemate, why would Iran not be similarly deterred by the certainty that using nuclear weapons would bring a hellish reprisal?"

My point, precisely. The west might wish that Iran's government was a western-style democracy, not a theocracy, but they the Ayatollahs are rational. Those robed and bearded Mullahs may rail against Zionism, but not Jews. In fact, Iranian Jews are represented in the multi-party system that comprises Iran's parliament.

Even one of the U-S's least rational Republicans, Senator Lindsey Graham, defeated his own pro-war mentality when he let slip that, "They (Iran's leaders) have two goals: one, regime survival. The best way for the regime surviving, in their mind, is having a nuclear weapon, because when you have a nuclear weapon, nobody attacks you."

Same can be said the Israel's Zionists. They went nuclear, just in case. Senator Graham added Iran's theocracy would also like to influence neighbours and trading partners. He is quoted as saying "people listen to you" when you have a nuclear weapon. Good point. 

Point taken, in fact, by no less than the U-S, Russia, China, France, the U-K, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. 

A nuclear-armed Iran could actually stabilize the region and allow its many nations to sit down and work out there differences, similarities and common needs. It would certainly make potential invaders reconsider. Yes, the rich Saudi theocratic dictators might use such an Iranian acquisition as an excuse to do the same. But guess who would benefit? The west's military industrial complex. An excellent business opportunity.

If Israel's nuclear stockpiled protects it from hostilities, why is Iran any different?

Also, ask yourself this (amid the torrent of sabre-rattling by U-S and Israeli hawks) - would Iran's leaders gladly murder millions of Palestinians in a nuclear holocaust, assure its own destruction and most certainly propel the world into war?

I don't think so.

The ultimate irony here is that the U-S sabre-rattlers are mostly members of the National Rifle Association, which argues that the more guns, the merrier. That if you are armed, you are safer. If your household contains armaments and you have the inalienable right to kill burglars, the bad guys would probably leave your house alone. Apparently that premise is faulty on a world scale.

One other quick thought (which will likely be the subject of a future blog) - how warm and cozy would the United States feel if, say, Iran invaded a neighbouring country (Mexico) and occupied it for a decade? A little threatened, perhaps? 

National Hockey League - Closed For Renovations

The National Hockey League is on thin ice. Again.

Most of its seven hundred or so players are booking tee times, beach holidays and massage therapy instead of packing their duffle bags and heading for annual September training camps. They have been locked out by owners who, it is claimed, voted 30-0 to proceed with door-closing at midnight Saturday September 15, 2012, the moment the current collective bargaining agreement, the CBA, expired. The reason? For the second time in just seven years players and those owners are at loggerheads over how to divvy up an expanding money pot.

You'd think this would be easy to resolve. Pragmatic, good-faith negotiations more often than not overcome differences, find compromises and solve themselves. But not this time, even though the NHL is generating more revenues than ever before and players can make more cash in a week than many people will make in 10 or 20 years. But not so fast.

The NHL has made a cost benefit analysis and concluded that even though overall revenues are up, there are still too many teams (rumoured to be 17 of 30) that are losing money. Instead of instituting a system of revenue sharing, in which the richest teams pay into an escrow pool and the weaker teams are propped up, the owners (even the magnates who operate money-losing franchises) want the players to give back enough to make up the difference. In other words, the rich teams would get richer, break even outfits would turn a profit and teams that are bleeding tens of millions each year might staunch some of the bleeding.

So how did it get to this point? We have to go back a few years.

The entire 2004-2005 NHL season was forfeited because team owners decided they needed a salary cap on the 23 players who make up an NHL team roster. The cap would exclude the amount a franchise could spend on everything else, from facilities, travel, hotel accommodation, farm teams and management. NHL franchises spend additional millions on their farm (development) teams.

After the 2004-2005 season was lost and summer arrived a deal was finally agreed - teams would be limited to spending $39 million dollars on big league salaries, but no team could spend less than $21.5 million. Those amounts were referred to as the 'ceiling' and the 'floor'. A maximum and minimum. The owners signed off on these terms along with other clauses in their favour, including limits on rookie pay for their first three seasons in the league, which it called 'entry-level' contracts. Rookies were limited to less than a million dollars per season for three seasons, but could triple that income through a bonus system.

In return the players would be able to become free agents after seven seasons, or the age of 27, which ever came first. There were no limits on contract length and a players actual salary and his 'cap hit' were two different things. In other words, a ten year contract for $30 million dollars would be a $3 million 'cap hit', but the player might actually be paid $6 million per year for four years and then $2 million per year for the next six years. It was a win-win for player and owner - the player made most of his money up from when he would be most productive to the team, but the team would be allowed to count just half that actually salary against the annual cap amount, thus having lots of room to sign make sure the other 22 players could be paid well, but fit inside the cap.

The annual ceiling and floor rates would be based on a percentage of projected revenues. Plus, the players would be guaranteed a percentage of hockey related revenue (HRR). In the just-ended 2011-2012 season that rate was 57 percent. To ensure the players actually got every dollar they were contractually promised, an escrow system was established in which a portion of the players pay was withheld. At the seasons end and before the next season began the HRR would be calculated and the players were get a cheque in mid October for the amount they were owed. In most cases it was more than the amount that was withheld and stored in escrow.

So that is enough on the background. Now to the last few months.

The team salary ceiling is up $31 million in seven years to about $70 million, but the floor has more than doubled from that $21.5 to a whopping, boat anchor-like drag of $54 million. That means that even the bleeding teams must pay an average salary of $2.34 million regardless of the talent or whether that amount alone is $20 million more than its projected income.  

Still, with the clock ticked in the waning weeks of the landmark seven year CBA that the owners once loved, they began to double-down on lengthy, guaranteed, one-way, no-trade contracts. Dozens of players got shiny new deals under the weight of this horrible, expiring agreement. They allowed, even encouraged their managers to pursue free agents and offer them as much as possible under the rules they had created, but which they say is killing them.

It's the height of owner hypocrisy in all, more than $500 million has been spent since the end of the last season in June. That, as those same owners are unanimous in their resolve not to operate under that system ever again because too many teams are losing money. And they say they won't let the players come back unless they agree to drastically reduce their share of the growing revenue pie (from 57 to 43 percent), agree to entry contracts that last five years, agree that they can't become free agents until they've played or 10 seasons, or the age of 30, and agree that the longest contract they can sign is for five years.

You get the feeling, however, that even if the players agreed to all of those terms (and they never will) the owners would still find a way to circumvent their own agreement and be begging for more player  concessions at the end of the new CBA.

But the head-scratching hypocrisy isn't limited to greedy, egomaniacal owners. They players claim solidarity. Yes, each individual has his own contract which can be five or ten times the amount his linemate is paid, but they all pay union dues; on for all and all for one. On the other hand these spoiled, millionaire hockey players have absolutely no rerspect for fellow hockey players outside the NHL.

They have no compunction whatsoever of putting other hockey players out of work in Europe or Russia. Hockey players who are not as well paid, but are playing a game for a living and likely raising a family on that income. So the lockout isn't just bad news for die-hard hockey fans, its even worse for these journeymen players in the KHL (Russia), Swedish Elite League and assorted leagues in Germany, Austria, Italy and Denmark.

In the real world when a company locks out its unionized workers (say plumbers or electricians), those workers are paid a stipend by their union, will picket their place of work, educate the passing public to the dispute and are would not be welcomed by other unionized shops that employee people of their ilk. The NHL Players Association should respect other player associations and the livelihoods of their fellow hockey players everywhere. Period.

Forgotten in all this hard-line posturing by billionaires and multi-millionaires are the fans. Will they come back next season like they did after the one-season shutdown seven years ago? Hard to say. Perhaps a second go-rpound in less than a decade will be too much for some, especially in those marginal, money-losing, fan-depleted marks like Phoenix and Florida.

Me? I like hockey, not necessarily the NHL brand. In fact I haven't supported a professional NHL team since 1968.

I'm a Toronto Maple Leafs fan.