United For NowI should be miserable. I am a hockey fan and - for the second time in a week - the National Hockey League has cancelled the season. A friend went from pissing bile to cautiously ecstatic and then back to the bile-pissing. I’m not upset, though. I’m proud that the NHLPA stood strong and refused to have a shitty deal shoved down their throats.
Only one league - the NBA - has ever made a credible case for a salary cap. They did it by opening their books, allowing the union to audit them, proving that the league was on the verge of collapse, and inviting the players to become partners in the revitalization of the league. The salary cap in the NBA is soft enough that it doesn’t really act as a drag on salaries and, as long as the well-oiled marketing machine of the NBA keeps printing money, will never be much of a drag anway (the cap number is linked to league revenue).
Baseball shouldn’t have a cap. Neither should football. Both leagues are highly successful, highly profitable enterprises. Teams that lose money in baseball earn that red ink through stupid decisions in the general manager’s office and the marketing department. The NHL - purportedly bleeding money - is not quite the cash cow that the other sports are, but there is no way that the teams are losing as much as ownership claims. First, the owners are all savvy businessmen who have proven themselves to be - if nothing else - rational economic actors. I refuse to believe that they keep making the same “mistake” over and over again. It appears that other savvy businessmen don’t believe it either. Every time a team is up for sale there is someone willing to purchase the franchise at a substantial profit for the selling owner.
The league offered the players a bum deal and the players turned it down at substantial cost to themselves. Papers across the country are dutifully squawking the same sad refrain: the players are “greedy” (the owners aren’t?) and “owe it to the fans” to just sign and play (is this a professional gig or a charity appearance at a senior center?). The conventional wisdom of the press is unvarnished horseshit and I for one am glad that the union stood strong.
Of course, I’d rather watch college hockey anyway. Cornell is currently #3 in the country (or, if you are a pure stathead, #7).The ECACHL conference tournament is coming up in a few weeks, so I’ll have plenty of hockey to enjoy. Plus, I got to see Cornell blow out league rivals Princeton and Yale last week. They continued to roll this weekend. Cornell is a virtual lock for the NCAA’s, so I’ll have plenty of hockey to watch.
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