If anyone still has interest (NHL season)

Penguinfan

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IE, GO HIJACK SOME OTHER THREAD AND LEAVE US FANS ALONE!!!!!!!!

WE STILL LOVE THE GAME, GO TO THE HANDICAPPING FORUM TO FIGURE OUT HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM THIS!!!!!!!
 

Penguinfan

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Now then, CONGRATS to Betteman for not backing down on this, I am as dissapointed as anyone that there will be no hockey this year, but the look on Goodenows face must be priceless about now.
Group suicide on the way.......

I'll have more after the press conference
 

Penguinfan

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Sorry NHLPA, Betteman is making alot of sense here, Goodenow will have a press conference at 4:00PM EST and he better have some really good spin to not look like an asshole in all of this. Betteman is saying how far apart the sides really were and how much the NHL was willing to bend to get a deal in place for this season to happen, like I said Bob better have some good spin on all of this.
 

Penguinfan

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Betteman said " I hope when all of this is over they (the players) think this was worth it, though I can't see how they will" ABSOLUTLY THE BOTTOM LINE HERE. The players will never get back over the life of their careers the money they are flushing down the toilet today, never. I guess they really showed them owners huh?
 

Snafu

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Bettman said that latest NHL offer is "on" 24 hours, then all deals are off the table.

this has gone so beyond bad soap opera, that NHLPA will take the offer and say "Bettman is our daddy"

what i have listened and red Bettmans thoughts about how to run NHL-business hi did the right thing now. -94 NHL gave up in negotiations and we can see results here.

do i remeber right but didn't they -94 cancell the season and next day there suddendly was a deal ????
 

Penguinfan

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Pet, I will go on record saying I think this is still not over, Goodenow has about two hours to fix this and I am sure his phone is rinnging off the hook from players calling. He called the NHL's bluff and lost a big pot here, now he has to make it right.
 

Snafu

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Penginfan, i have last two weeks been believing that season starts and i just don't know now, they were really close to make a deal but then players side wanted an index based on 2005-06 season, that would have ofcourse been financially bad season, and salary expenses would have sky rocketed nexy seasons to the cap.

but i think there will come out quite a lot of interesting information about negotiations in a few days.


well, hockey goes on here and i hope that when nhl comes back they really have their s*it together.
 

GM

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This probably won't be a popular point of view, but I'll throw it out there anyways.

Does ANYBODY besides me feel the owners are asking for too much? Ok, it is very easy to say the players are greedy, the players make too much money, etc etc. They do. But from what I have seen of these negotiations (if you can call them that), the owners have barely given an inch.

The players offered an immediate 24% cut in salaries across the board. The owners said it wasn't good enough. They held extremely firm on a $42 million salary cap. The players said they would not accept a cap all the way along...and then last night suddenly backtracked and offered a $52 million cap...and later lowered that to $49 million. The league edged up to $42.5 million, then later added $2.2 million more for bonuses, to bring it to $44.7 million. The league also dropped a requirement for linkage.

So in essence the league has moved $2.7 million off of their initial stance, while the players have given up a quarter of their salaries + capped themselves. And everyone it seems is on the owner's side of this. I think this is part of the problem.

And then the most incredible thing I have heard....Gary Bettman now is quoted as saying that even if they settled on the LEAGUE'S OWN proposal of $44.7 million, they NOW feel that isn't fair either, and that "the salary cap is the problem". Bettman was just on TV saying the cap has a way of acting like a "salary magnet" in the other leagues or some such thing, and that if they have a cap that high all teams not currently at that level (26 of the 30 clubs) will increase spending to get to that level. So now that they have pushed the players for months for a salary cap and gotten it, they claim the salary cap itself is the problem. WTF?? Now they want more than they did going into all of this.

The whole thing is just bullying, both sides trying to "win" but not concerned about the state of the game. But nobody is holding the owners accountable for their actions. It may be a league of millionaire players, but the billionaire owners are making out like bandits too.

Personally I find it disgusting that all these NHL players are taking jobs away from others in Europe and the AHL. I can't support them in that. But...I really think everyone should give this a bit more thought and hold the owners accountable as well. As it is now I really don't feel that they feel the pressure to get a deal done.

The owners are the ones who could not control themselves, and who signed these players to ridiculous contracts. Nobody was holding a gun to their heads. Sorry, I am not usually on the labor side of anything, and in some ways it seems funny to me that I would be on labor's side when you've got "employees" making this much money. But somebody has got to take the opposite stance and let the NHL know that they are not blameless in this mess, and that we expect them as well as the players to make it work. If a deal is ever going to be reached the owners have to take their share of the blame for helping to create it.

I am probably in the <10% of people who think the owners need to budge more, but so be it...
 
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stomie

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maybe it's not done yet, Darren Pang is saying he's getting alot of calls
from players saying they are pressuring Bob Goodenow to lower their price to
44million in hopes of getting a deal.

because Bettman was asked could a deal be worked out at 44-45 million and he
never said no.

Panger just said that if others are getting as many calls as he is that he
expects Goodenow to make another offer during the PA news conference at 4pm

could be interesting if they actually did that. But I bet Bettman would still say no, you missed your chance.
 

GM

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And so it ends

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
February 16, 2005

Bettman? Bye, bye. Goodenow? Good night.

Can we start with that now that hockey is finished?

Can we beg and plead with the players and owners to agree on one thing ? that these two egomaniacs they put in charge of engaging in a game of corporate chicken have proven themselves a couple of clowns?

Can we plead that both sides not just fire these two, but put them on a rail and ship them to Flin Flon?

The NHL season is done, officially called off by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman on Wednesday, because neither he nor union leader Bob Goodenow could get their priorities in order.

It wasn't about saving hockey. It was about saving face.

It wasn't about getting a deal done. It was about getting the other guy.

The two sides reportedly didn't even talk Wednesday, fiddling while the ice burned.

Not one phone call? Not one fax? Not one counteroffer?

Unbelievable.

Let's start with Goodenow, who has some serious explaining to do to his jilted players' association. He caved on the salary cap but then wouldn't jump on the NHL's final offer ? a $42.5 million ceiling ? even though it was unlikely he'd ever see a better deal.

After the players' association proposed a 24 percent salary rollback, only four teams would have a current payroll over $42.5 million. This deal would have come as close as possible to maintaining the rich status quo, even though any fool can see revenue is going to drop with bad television deals, widespread fan unrest and sponsorship losses.

Moreover, making the deal was the best chance at keeping the league at its present 30 teams. Major contraction might be good for the competitive sake of the NHL, but it isn't good for protecting union jobs.

How he let this one pass, how he spun a 180 in the 11th hour on the salary cap, how he left the union open to be eventually broken is unfathomable.

So be gone with him. Please. Fire him this afternoon.

Not that Bettman deserves some Nobel Prize for fair negotiations. There is no denying that under his stewardship the NHL has been run into the grave. The league has been mismanaged, misplaced, overexpanded and overpriced, all because Bettman turned his back on the core fans ? believing there was a pot of television and corporate (fool's) gold at the end of the small market rainbow.

The reason the cap needed to be at $42.5 million, and not Goodenow's $49 million, is because the league is leaking oil.

Bettman has been a complete and utter failure as commissioner. There is no other way to describe his tenure. He took a historic business, made major operating changes and, 13 years later, it no longer exists. That's a disaster, no matter how freshly pressed his monogrammed shirts are.

To make matters worse were his negotiating tactics in the final hours. If Bettman wanted to do a deal and not do in Goodenow, he would have quietly offered an olive branch, found common ground, negotiated in private.

He would have recognized the strength and weaknesses of his opponent. He would have met in the middle, not just on the salary cap numbers, but personally.

Instead, he released a juvenile, snippy letter to the media last night ? negotiating through the Associated Press wire ? in a move that clearly boxed Goodenow into a corner. Bettman couldn't wait to show the world he was winning this battle, he couldn't avoid flaunting and taunting, he couldn't stand to give his rival a way out.

If Bettman wanted hockey, if Bettman wanted a season, if Bettman wanted a deal, he should have acted like it.

So be gone with him too. Please. Fire him this afternoon.

There is no hockey because two suits who don't care enough about hockey killed it. Two guys who see this as only a business and not a sport, who saw these negotiations as a personal test of wills rather than a partnership, who cared only about individual glory and not passion, tradition and history.

The NHL doesn't exist right now. Its problems are massive. Not just the collective bargaining agreement, but its quality of play and its connection with the fans.

The current leaders have killed a sport. They created this mess. They shouldn't be trusted to clean it up.

So let's start the rebirth with new leaders.

Wayne Gretzky? Brian Burke? Ken Dryden? Mario Lemieux?

I'd take Don Cherry and Barry Melrose at this point.

At least I know they care about hockey and not just themselves.
 

ddubs

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Latest I hear is that the players are calling and pounding Goodenow to accept the deal or remedy the situation somehow right now, or they will oust him out of office.

PC in 4 min. We'll find out soon enough.
 

ddubs

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Did you hear that shit?

"Gary owes the fans an apology, because he started it"

Are you fawking kidding me?? How old are you, Bob?? 6??
 

Snafu

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This time next week, Bob's next question and answer session will go something like this:

'Would you like fries with that?'
 

Penguinfan

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GM, one thing you are forgetting in all of this, and I can see your point about teams not spending the max currently, but please remember a salary cap is not put into place to police teams that are speneding little, it is put in place to govern teams that are spending out of control and taking all the talent away from the smaller markets, you seem to be missing this very important point. You and Goodengoon can argue that the owners need to police themselves and not spend so much, well first of all the situation is what it is and has to be addressed on a more finite level than just trusting each other, sorry, but thats the case. Second if the owners did police themselves and privatley agree not to spend more than a fixed price on any one player or team you can be damned sure the NHLPA would be going to court suing the owners over it.

This is completely Bob Goodenow and the NHLPA's fault, plain and simple. They will not get back over the course of thier careers to make up for what they loose this year, they have screwed themselves beyond belief.

I have never been a big fan of Gary Betteman, but after watching Goodenow's press conference I have to say that anyone who makes Betteman look like a genious can't be good for anyone.

I'll say it again, enjoy the abyss morons, you have certainly earned it.
 

Penguinfan

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Take heart good Doctor, this is not over yet. Yes I realize many may think I am delusional at this point, but there is too much to be lost by just letting this slip away. The offer only goes down hill from here, and remember 10 years ago the season was cancelled and then un-cancelled. Hang on........
 

ddubs

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Latest rumor......MUTINY!

Goodenow's job is in serious jeopardy.

NHL's offer is still on the table if the players want it. 24 hrs from the NHL PC.

Very slim chance this gets done. The season's probably lost, but we'll see.
 
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