folgersnyourcup
03-31-2003, 05:59 PM
I saw this and just wanted to post it here in case anyone hadn't yet seen it on espn.com I'm hoping they work something out soon about this.
For the NHL, no time will be like the present
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Terry Frei
Special to ESPN.com
No, this won't be the final NHL playoff season before the end of the collective bargaining agreement, which in turn might lead to a work stoppage that lasts about as long as the average obstruction crackdown.
Two, three days. Tops.
It also could last a lot longer. And the safe betting is that it would.
Unless the CBA issue is settled in advance of the expiration of the current agreement -- Sept. 14, 2004 -- virtually every NHL story line next season will have a labor component, even if that component is an unshakable feeling of dread.
Ever try to go to bed at 9 p.m. because you have to get up at 3:30 a.m. to catch a crack-of-dawn flight or drive to a breakfast meeting? Completely psych yourself out of ever really getting into a deep sleep because of it? Spend all night dozing fitfully and looking at the clock every 11 minutes? Oh, you haven't?
Well, some of us have.
And that's the 2003-04 NHL season and 2004 playoffs are going to feel like -- for everyone -- if the league and the players association don't knock off this who-blinks-first, gotta-wait-'til-the-pressure's-on attitude about getting a deal done.
Yes, bringing this up now is playing right into that sky-is-falling mentality, but this also is a sport that has shown a remarkable ability to arrest its own progress.
It has been as if the NHL, faced with the prospect of more widespread acceptance in the marketplace -- and that means in Topeka, too -- backs away because that is as intimidating as Bob Probert in his prime, before the border check.
Like it or not, and some of us don't always appreciate the excessive worship of teams in the most provincial media market in North America (New York, N.Y.), the Rangers' '94 Stanley Cup triumph was a potential boon for the league.
And the league threw that right out the window, with the prolonged work stoppage that led to a 48-game season starting after New Year's Day 1995. Granted, this hasn't been baseball, where the scribes who have turned the sport into an actuarial table surely can tell us about the effect of the 31 work stoppages on left-handed setup men in the eighth innings of Tuesday night games, lasting three and a half hours or shorter, within four weeks of the settlements.
Heaven help us all if this becomes baseball, which still is a mess despite the avoidance of a strike/lockout last time.
But hockey could learn from that, and trump it.
Get the damn thing settled.
It just makes so much sense for all sides for the NHL to get its act together and reach a settlement, forestalling a stoppage.
That about rules it out, doesn't it?
Yes, commissioner Gary Bettman has said the league could have a concrete proposal on the table the second the NHLPA gives the high sign for the beginning of negotiations. In that sense, the onus is on the NHLPA. But the way the league has been taking the position that the new agreement will be about the players saving the owners from themselves, the NHLPA's position also is understandable.
Beginning at the All-Star weekend in Florida, Bettman softened his public stance, and was more conciliatory, which is both prudent for bargaining purposes and wise public relations.
But nothing seems to be happening.
So at the dawning of the final week of the NHL's 2002-03 season unfolds, perhaps we should step back and revel in the upcoming drama.
And there is plenty of it, as teams scramble for the top spots in the West and the first-round pairings still could involve about 163 different matchups, yet the most compelling possibility remains a Colorado-St. Louis pairing.
The Hart Trophy and scoring races are coming down to a showdown between the two pals from Ornskoldsvik, Markus Naslund and Peter Forsberg -- with enough votes for Joe Thornton, Todd Bertuzzi and Martin Brodeur tossed in to affect the outcome. Will the pro-Swedish vote be split? Will the pro-Canada (not to be confused with O' Canada) vote be split? How will it sort out? That's politics.
The CBA is business.
Where this league shines is on the ice. When it lets itself. When the skill breaks through the obstruction, which still happens often enough to take your breath away. When it isn't condoning a late-season realignment of rosters that highlights the relative irrelevancy of what goes on October to March. When the game is allowed to be the thing.
This is what the league does right.
There is no better postseason in sports, especially since baseball began playing five-hour World Series games that barely start when school kids should have been in bed, and rarely finish before bartenders give last call. (And that's in the West.) That takes in U.S. college basketball, because you 're wondering -- or at least you should be -- how many of the teams making the NCAA's Sweet 16 will be nailed for academic fraud, recruiting violations or payoffs from numbers runners within the next five years.
The one benefit of a 30-team league is that it means something to make it to the playoffs, and that's why any talk of expanding the postseason must continue to be rejected out of hand.
There are no walkovers. Tension and tempers and enmity and rivalry build through a series, and then you shake hands and half of you move on to do it again against somebody else. For all the valid arguments that payroll is the critical element in NHL success, this could be the season that illustrates that teams with mid-level payrolls can pull it off -- and you might even be able to throw the relatively fiscally (ahem) prudent Devils into that category, along with the Senators and Canucks.
Let the games begin.
Then start bargaining.
For the NHL, no time will be like the present
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Terry Frei
Special to ESPN.com
No, this won't be the final NHL playoff season before the end of the collective bargaining agreement, which in turn might lead to a work stoppage that lasts about as long as the average obstruction crackdown.
Two, three days. Tops.
It also could last a lot longer. And the safe betting is that it would.
Unless the CBA issue is settled in advance of the expiration of the current agreement -- Sept. 14, 2004 -- virtually every NHL story line next season will have a labor component, even if that component is an unshakable feeling of dread.
Ever try to go to bed at 9 p.m. because you have to get up at 3:30 a.m. to catch a crack-of-dawn flight or drive to a breakfast meeting? Completely psych yourself out of ever really getting into a deep sleep because of it? Spend all night dozing fitfully and looking at the clock every 11 minutes? Oh, you haven't?
Well, some of us have.
And that's the 2003-04 NHL season and 2004 playoffs are going to feel like -- for everyone -- if the league and the players association don't knock off this who-blinks-first, gotta-wait-'til-the-pressure's-on attitude about getting a deal done.
Yes, bringing this up now is playing right into that sky-is-falling mentality, but this also is a sport that has shown a remarkable ability to arrest its own progress.
It has been as if the NHL, faced with the prospect of more widespread acceptance in the marketplace -- and that means in Topeka, too -- backs away because that is as intimidating as Bob Probert in his prime, before the border check.
Like it or not, and some of us don't always appreciate the excessive worship of teams in the most provincial media market in North America (New York, N.Y.), the Rangers' '94 Stanley Cup triumph was a potential boon for the league.
And the league threw that right out the window, with the prolonged work stoppage that led to a 48-game season starting after New Year's Day 1995. Granted, this hasn't been baseball, where the scribes who have turned the sport into an actuarial table surely can tell us about the effect of the 31 work stoppages on left-handed setup men in the eighth innings of Tuesday night games, lasting three and a half hours or shorter, within four weeks of the settlements.
Heaven help us all if this becomes baseball, which still is a mess despite the avoidance of a strike/lockout last time.
But hockey could learn from that, and trump it.
Get the damn thing settled.
It just makes so much sense for all sides for the NHL to get its act together and reach a settlement, forestalling a stoppage.
That about rules it out, doesn't it?
Yes, commissioner Gary Bettman has said the league could have a concrete proposal on the table the second the NHLPA gives the high sign for the beginning of negotiations. In that sense, the onus is on the NHLPA. But the way the league has been taking the position that the new agreement will be about the players saving the owners from themselves, the NHLPA's position also is understandable.
Beginning at the All-Star weekend in Florida, Bettman softened his public stance, and was more conciliatory, which is both prudent for bargaining purposes and wise public relations.
But nothing seems to be happening.
So at the dawning of the final week of the NHL's 2002-03 season unfolds, perhaps we should step back and revel in the upcoming drama.
And there is plenty of it, as teams scramble for the top spots in the West and the first-round pairings still could involve about 163 different matchups, yet the most compelling possibility remains a Colorado-St. Louis pairing.
The Hart Trophy and scoring races are coming down to a showdown between the two pals from Ornskoldsvik, Markus Naslund and Peter Forsberg -- with enough votes for Joe Thornton, Todd Bertuzzi and Martin Brodeur tossed in to affect the outcome. Will the pro-Swedish vote be split? Will the pro-Canada (not to be confused with O' Canada) vote be split? How will it sort out? That's politics.
The CBA is business.
Where this league shines is on the ice. When it lets itself. When the skill breaks through the obstruction, which still happens often enough to take your breath away. When it isn't condoning a late-season realignment of rosters that highlights the relative irrelevancy of what goes on October to March. When the game is allowed to be the thing.
This is what the league does right.
There is no better postseason in sports, especially since baseball began playing five-hour World Series games that barely start when school kids should have been in bed, and rarely finish before bartenders give last call. (And that's in the West.) That takes in U.S. college basketball, because you 're wondering -- or at least you should be -- how many of the teams making the NCAA's Sweet 16 will be nailed for academic fraud, recruiting violations or payoffs from numbers runners within the next five years.
The one benefit of a 30-team league is that it means something to make it to the playoffs, and that's why any talk of expanding the postseason must continue to be rejected out of hand.
There are no walkovers. Tension and tempers and enmity and rivalry build through a series, and then you shake hands and half of you move on to do it again against somebody else. For all the valid arguments that payroll is the critical element in NHL success, this could be the season that illustrates that teams with mid-level payrolls can pull it off -- and you might even be able to throw the relatively fiscally (ahem) prudent Devils into that category, along with the Senators and Canucks.
Let the games begin.
Then start bargaining.