Let the bleeding begin.
A labor war that had been widely predicted had its first shot fired Wednesday when the NHL Board of Governors voted unanimously to lock out its players when the collective bargaining agreement expired at 11 p.m. Wednesday.
The lockout postponed the start of training camp for the 2004-05 season, scheduled to begin Thursday, and threatens the entire season.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman blamed the lockout–the second in the last 10 years in the NHL–on the players’ union.
“When the union wants to stop the posturing and acknowledges the problems are as real as our governors’ resolve to fix them, we will be here, ready to make a fair and meaningful agreement that will usher in a new era,” Bettman said.
The stumbling block between the owners and players centers on the league’s desire to institute what it terms as “cost certainty” and the players refer to as a salary cap.
The owners presented the union with six proposals, all of which tie the amount of money for salaries to a percentage of the league’s revenues.
The league maintains that under their proposals, the average salary of NHL players will be $1.3 million and that the players would receive more than 50 percent of league revenues.
“It may be less than the players are getting now, but we won’t apologize for an offer that is more than fair,” Bettman said.
The league contends that player salaries consume 75 percent of the teams’ revenues and that the average player salary is $1.8 million. They also maintain that 20 of the 30 teams in the league are losing money and that under the CBA born out of the ’94 lockout the league has lost $1.8 billion.
Bettman said teams would lose less money by not playing than by continuing under the current system.
“We would lose franchises and the game would be in terrible shape,” he said. “We’re out of gas.”
Shortly after Bettman made his remarks in New York, union chief Bob Goodenow disputed Bettman’s claim in Toronto.
There were no talks Wednesday as the clocked ticked toward a stoppage, and none are scheduled. Perhaps conceding the season will not start on time, Bettman has authorized the owners to release their buildings for events for the next month.
The NHL exhibition games were scheduled to begin at the end of September with the regular season beginning Oct. 13.
Goodenow said the union has made significant concessions. The union has offered a luxury tax, a rollback of salaries and a change to the entry-level pay structure it says will produce hundreds of millions of dollars in savings to the owners.
“We made a major step forward, with all those concessions and all those adjustments that we said we would consider and work around,” Goodenow said.
“[Bettman’s] response to us was simply one thing and has been one thing–salary cap, salary cap, salary cap.”
