Have you noticed that Bill Daly is the one clearing his throat every day now? Where’s Gary Bettman?
Bad cold? Lost his voice? Gastro problems. Has Bettman suddenly been diagnosed with agoraphobia where he won’t venture outside because he fears wide-open spaces? Or is he in Russia watching Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk for a hockey fix?
The media has long found Daly, Bettman’s Robin, more to their liking as an accomodating fellow, but Donald Fehr is still talking for the players in their battle over how to slice up that $3 billion revenue pie. The leaders are supposed to talk, aren’t they? So where’s Waldo, I mean, Gary?
Fehr was sitting down with the Toronto Star’s editorial board Tuesday for an hour to lay out the union’s side, saying a dragged-out work stoppage (I still think we’re going to at least Dec. 1) might somehow lead to talk of revisiting the darned salary cap which was shoved down the players’ throats in 2005 after the NHL rinks were dark for a whole season.
Daly was on CBC radio with Bob Stellick, the onetime Maple Leafs’ GM, and Craig Simpson, the onetime 50-goal scorer, saying outside mediation isn’t needed at this point. I think he’s wrong, but maybe that’s just me. Whatever, Daly thinks mediators can stay away for now because both sides do understand each other’s position. Immediate cuts in salary for the players by the NHL’; revenue sharing by the strong clubs to help the weak teams from the union.
While the players have started mentioning the salary cap and how they don’t like it, I’m sure the NHL’s card to play is “OK, no more guaranteed contracts…why shouldn’t teams be able to cut players out-right three years into a five-year deal when they’ve had 15, 12 and 10 goals and 40, 32 and 28 points as a supposed top six forward?” Tell them they’re free-agents. But we digress.
We do know they’ll be back at the table Wednesday–Bettman will be there but will he talk afterwards or will it be Daly again?–working on those “underbrush” issues as Daly has said, nothing about the economics where the players proposal is 54.3 percent of revenue starting in year one with the owners at 47 percent or thereabouts. If the NHL just said “OK, we’re not cutting any salaries for the upcoming season” they would immediately get the players’ attention. Will that happen? Probably not. If the players said, “OK, we realize that any owner of a business shouldn’t have to pay more than 50 percent of his revenue to his employers”, then that would get the owners’ ears to perk up.
But again, where’s Bettman? The ruler of the Evil Empire? The lightning rod for the players on twitter. He’s really gone underground the last few weeks. He’s had nothing to say. Maybe that’s his game-plan; let Daly, also a lawyer and his second-in-command, be the owner’s front-man for awhile.
Or am I wrong?
