SO GARY Bettman and his executive mouth pieces believe that the CBA concept pres ented to the league by the PA last Monday might be workable – if the numbers are agreeable. Which, from what we’ve been told by several snitches, means that the PA’s concept might be workable if, when all the numbers are counted, the total payroll expenditures amount to approximately 54 percent of the gross revenues.
And where have we heard this before?
As we understand it, the PA proposed an approximate team payroll range between $24M-and-$42.5M for 2005-06 (maybe slightly less), with the band thereafter linked to percentage increases OR decreases in readily identifiable league revenues. So that if the NHL matches its average growth of 7.8 percent over its last five seasons, the ceiling would increase to more than $48M in two years. Conversely, if the lockout/cancellation damage is irreversible in the short-term, the cap would be shifted downward.
There are luxury tax and revenue-share components within the PA concept, both of which are consistent with the union’s approach throughout the lockout. But it’s the introduction for first time of the union’s willingness to link downward that has created a carefully crafted and managed league position of cautious optimism.
Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe, when the sides meet again this week, Bettman will present a reasonable counter. Maybe the less harsh rhetoric is meaningful. But we’re very skeptical. This last week of good feeling smells suspiciously like a setup, just the way the Feb. 9 “compromise trigger” was a setup, just the way the Feb. 19 Double Cancellation Saturday was a setup. It smells suspiciously as if the league has gone out of its way to create an environment of expectancy, specifically among players who are anxious to lace them up.
Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe the owners have finally come to their senses and understand that 2005-06 scab hockey will mark the end of their league as a credible enterprise. Maybe the owners will for the first time bargain in good faith. But we have the feeling that Bettman and the Board will present a counter with the range falling somewhere between $28-34M in an attempt to come as close as possible to their precious, albeit meaningless, league 54 percent.
Understand. The league has never wavered from its goal to create as narrow a band as possible between the top and bottom payroll clubs. Forget that the NBA this season has a payroll range of $25M-$105M, with its three best teams, Phoenix, Seattle and Miami, ranked 25th, 18th and 13th, respectively, in payroll.
A review of the league’s last 54-percent proposal illustrates the league’s hypocrisy. This proposal rewards the rich and penalizes the poor. How noble. Using 2003-04 figures and the league’s own revenue-share plan, clubs would be required to invest no less than $34.3M and no more than $41.3M on payroll. But, as we have repeatedly stated, without massive revenue sharing, an overall percentage of the gross is meaningless.
Under the league plan, Toronto, hitting the cap, would spend 37.8 percent of its revenue on payroll. Meanwhile, Nashville, at the required minimum, would be forced to spend 69.1 percent of its revenue on salaries. This pattern follows throughout, and would necessarily become more dramatically skewed with reductions in revenues certain to strike the league’s soft, low-revenue U.S. markets more dramatically than the traditionally strong clubs in Canada and the States. It’s likely that Carolina, Florida, Washington and Phoenix, for instance, would actually be required to invest up to 80 percent of their revenue into payroll. What would Mr. Levitt say about that?
This lockout, this insistence on linkage regardless of the cost, has now officially become the operation the league will claim a success even if the patient dies. But maybe we’re wrong. After all, the league thinks it can work with the PA’s concept – if, that is, the numbers are agreeable.
