Back To The Heat, and the Ice

Zero hour.

As we've been want to do on these pages, addressing and observing the spectacle of the ongoing NHL lockout has been a dark, macabre pasttime, albeit one that cannot be ignored, if only for the impending significance of an entire season lost to the difference of what could conceivably be about $10 or so million.

And yet, yesterday morning brought news that some significant coming together between the NHL and the Players Association was not false but indeed was fact. First the NHL indicated it was willing to abandon a revenue-based link in its salary cap figure, and in answer the Players Association responded by acknowledging it would accept a non-linked salary cap. So faced with a deadline of season cancellation of Wednesday at 11:ooAM (and a subsequent press conference confirming same two hours later), the two sides began negotiating for real, for the first time in months.

The back-and-forth left us with the following scenario: the league is willing to abandon their requirement of a salary cap linked to annual league revenue, in favor of a maximum salary cap of $42.5 million. The Players Association would accept a non-linked salary cap, but they will not accede to a cap which falls below $49 million. The Players Association has offered a 24% rollback on all current salaries, which effectively is a short-term component to the eventual solution to the problem, and thus, the two sides are less than $10 million -- per team -- apart.

Which certainly is a lot closer than they were on Sunday night, or at any other point of this exercise in stupidity.

In 1995, the year following the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup, a lockout shortened the season due to a similar back-and-forth between the same individuals and entities, ie Gary Bettman, commissioner of the NHL, and Bob Goodenow, director of the NHL Players Association. These two individuals are mere figureheads that represent two very distinct groups with two very distinct missions: the league wants to maximize the profits for its members (aka each team), and the players association wants to maximize the profits for its members (aka the players). The problem is that none of these idiots has any clue that with each passing day of a very public labor dispute, all sides lose. They don't realize that the common hockey fan doesn't want to be regaled with spreadsheets and cost certainty arguments -- they want (in theory) to watch hockey.

In years past, seasons uncomplicated with labor-related disputes, the Rangers would be yet another pitiful cellar-dweller which would leave me scratching my head and wondering why I was watching in the first place. And in some way, being a hockey fan and being held hostage among the negotiations of the aforementioned parties is akin to pinning one's hopes on the coattails of a lousy team: even if something good gets cooking, you never know whether it will bear fruit, and the overwhelming suspicion is that it won't. So while I am optimistic the two sides will, in fact, reach some sort of season-saving consensus short of the deadline today, I am wondering if it's worth it and whether it makes any difference as a fan of a team which would otherwise be virtually eliminated from the playoffs at this point in the first place.

Given the choices, obviously I'd prefer for the league to function as designed (ie for hockey to continue being played), but I wonder how much damage a 'non-season' will have on a game which has far more integrity than any other major professional sport seems to possess. Aside from the myriad technical rules of the game of hockey, the competition features many unwritten moires and codes of conduct, and this labor dispute which has threatened the season and the game's very existence has done more damage than one can currently assess. What I think, however, is that the greed and the stubborn, dogmatic clinging to philosophies and beliefs has done more to decrease my interest in the actual on-ice product than my team's inexorable, inevitable ineptitude.

As fans, we blame the players for failing when they fail, and we blame the league when it fails to establish the framework to maintain the game. And so in this, a game within (or outside) the game, it's clear that the winners are the people making money off the fans, and the losers are in fact the fans themselves.

As much as it will be good to see hockey return to the ice, it's almost bittersweet in that it serves to remind me that the greed, selfishness and disregard and disrespect of the integrity of the game leaves the fans as the only true losers in this game outside/within the game.

Now that this "other" game is winding down, be prepared for a post-game play-by-play. And even if it won't be pretty, it will be in the books, and, until the next time these two have a chance to tussle, it will be in the past tense.

Or, at least, I hope so...

I think.