Lockout?! We don't need no stinkin' lockout!

Hockey is fucked this season, players are at 57 percent for shared revenue and the owners definitely want them below 50.

Every time a hockey CBA expires there will be a lockout, just the way the NHL is.

 

Why not? It's not like Joe Thornton is our slave. Unlike school teachers or policemen who could be said to be, in the short term, irreplaceable and vital to the functioning of civilization, I can't possibly comprehend a rationale where sports teams aren't allowed to stop work.

And no, it doesn't. You're paid for the value of your work. And the fact is that these folks work is extremely valuable: millions of us are willing to fork over money to watch these people play. So there is a lot of money at stake for both parties. If we want to say that athletes "shouldn't" be millionaires, then the blame is back on us. At the end of the day, it's our money that's going towards them.

 

The NHL lockout is terrible and Bettman should be kicked in the nuts repeatedly for allowing it to happen. Not that I'm some blind Bettman hater like some, but the NHL has long been in 4th place when it comes to the major professional sports. However, its made some great gains lately, picked up casual fans with good stories and compelling playoff hockey, and then shit like this happens and takes so much of the momentum away.

I saw a quote from one of the players involved in discussions, I forget who, but basically he said "We came back to the table with changes that would give the owners another 800 million dollars and they simply responded with "No, you guys are making too much money." Its fucking ridiculous. They're the ones paying those salaries. I can understand the dislike of some of the front loaded contracts, cause thats a salary cap quirk that needs adjustment, but allowing the league to go to another lockout because of a salary market you created is just BS.

 

This is probably obvious, but the problem from the owner's perspective is that they are engaged in a prisoner's dilemma of sorts. They would all benefit from a lower overall salary level, but on the marginal level, they have no incentive to not pay a little bit more for an individual player. Each owner's higher salary offer hurts every other owner in terms of rising salary expectations, but they don't trust each other enough to just all agree not to sign players for higher contract values. That's why they want to get this lower percentage number in writing: because by binding every other owner, it limits how much they have to spend for the same amount of talent.

 

So, you've clearly never been to Canada.

 

I remember reading this article. It sounds a little ridiculous in some places but it's pretty interesting.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/magazine/2012/08/16/fixing_nhl_crisis_in_five_easy_steps/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.sportsnet.ca/magazine/2012/0 ... asy_steps/</a>

Also Canada will be fine there's still the OHL and other leagues. Go Knights!

 

This fucking steams my kettle, and why wouldn't it? Pigs are butting heads with pigs and the answer to the issue is: FUCK EVERYBODY ELSE.

I don't know why I continue to love something that doesn't give a shit about me or anybody else that cares for it, but someday it will come back again and I'll welcome it with open arms like the submissive little booty call-bitch I am. Thank God my city has a first-rate junior team, or the sport would be lost to me completely.

It's all fucking bullshit is what it is. Another season twisting down the drain because being rich and famous to do exactly what you love just isn't good enough. I have defended this sport since I was five years old: a full-contact high speed sport that doesn't let you run out of bounds. One timeout. It doesn't get more primal. And fucking politics and money has turned it into a pro sports laughing stock. Hang your heads in shame.

 

It kind of puts things in perspective when you realize the NFL referees lockout is more important than the NHL players lockout.

 

The whole situation pisses me off. As I understand it, one of the hot button issues is the financial issues facing small market teams. Guess what? Hockey doesn't belong in Phoenix, Florida, Nashville, Columbus, etc. These are shitty markets for the sport and do nothing to grow it. The success of the Jets was awesome to watch last year. Even though they only have a 15,000 seat arena, they sell out every game and sell more tickets than the franchise did the previous year in Atlanta. Moving teams to Hamilton and Quebec City would definitely help with some of the revenue issues currently facing the NHL.

Teams offer players outrageous contracts, i.e. the Parise and Suter deals, then want to lower salaries. The fact that millionaires are fighting over money does not bother me. I realize most are overpaid but the owners are in the wrong here. I think Bettman had a lockout in his mind from the get-go. Just look at the contracts signed in the off season. The owners had no intention of paying the full value of those contracts. Players only got those contracts because of the imminent lockout. If the owners and Bettman have their way, Bettman would make more money than Sidney Crosby. In what world is it acceptable that a commissioner is higher paid than one of the world's premier players?

Not more important, only more publicized. Because ESPN no longer broadcasts the NHL, it acts as though the league doesn't exist. Fuck ESPN.

If you're in a city with an AHL team get ready to see some of the best young players in the world come through your town. There is an AHL team near where I go to school. They are getting several excellent players from the NHL club. I cannot wait to watch them. I plan on being at training camp watching them next Wednesday.

 

I'm not a super sports fanatic, and frankly, don't give a shit how much they are paid either way.

However I have issue with this line:

You are not really paid for the value of your work. That is not how the market works.


For instance, at my current job, I'm actually responsible for $30 million a month. I can easily, EASILY f*ck stuff up and make a $50,000 mistake like the blink of an eye.

But in reality, although my job requires a certain degree of skill, it doesn't require THAT much skill. In other words, there would no utility to raising the salary of the job, because there's a skill cap to the job, which salary wouldn't enhance (or would only very marginally enhance) after a certain level.

In essence, your job is only worth what the next guy of equivalent skill would work for it.

That's why is oversaturated markets and industries, or overpopulated places like China, workers get fucked. Because there aren't enough jobs to go around, and it's an employers market.


Major league sports are complicated. It's hard to say if A list player who's cream in the crop will bring in the extra $20 million in salary he's requesting. He very may well double that, or fall completely short.

Or maybe the A-listers generally over-bring-in their salaries, but the D-list players? The guys making $2 million? Maybe you could find a guy to play for $500,000 that wouldn't affect the bottom line adversely.

Salary has been, and always will be, a game of imperfect information, and adversarial actors (workers vs employers).

An individual, including a hiring manager, will always attempt to maximize his salary even at the expense of the company or organization. As will a CEO or executive. Many people will be overpaid for their work, and many underpaid.

 

You're at least partially right. I was just being kinda sloppy in my phrasing: by "value of your work," yes I should have said the value of you personally doing your work. Unless there's something bizarre going on, you are worth what the market will pay you. However, there is something bizarre going on in the NHL: collective bargaining.

I don't know a lot about NHL salary cap structure, as I'm not a huge NHL fan. However, assuming it works a lot like the NBA, which I am quite familiar with, it is typically the case that superstars are paid far below their value by most measures (wins produced, revenue, whatever) whereas marginal players are overpaid. It's a feature of having minimum and maximum salaries.

The worst NHL player is paid $500,000. The odds that they could get a fairly comparable player for $480,000 are quite high. Hell, the player in question would probably be willing to sign that contract. But the owners can't pay a player that.

Likewise, they can't pay a player above $7,800,00. Also, the overall salary cap may imposes a false constraint on how much they'd be willing to pay individual players.

So this means that yes, at these upper and lower bounds, we can't really say the players are being paid fairly. However, there aren't that many true minimum-salary or maximum-salary players. It's far more likely that the overall team constraint is more binding.

If the trees hold a lockout in a forest but no one watches them anyway...