The NHL labor negotiations

With a little over 3 weeks to go before the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Sept. 15, the NHL and the players appear far apart in their negotiations. Let's examine a few issues and see who's being fair and who's not.

The league wants the players to reduce their current share of revenues from 57%  to 43%. That's quite a cut, to the tune of approximately $450 million. Do the owners really need another $450M? Somehow I doubt that. A more reasonable figure would seem to be in order. Why not split the difference and make it 50-50?

The league wants to limit the length of contracts to 5 years. Currently there's no limit. That makes sense on two fronts. First, it's ludicrous to sign a player to a 10-12 year contract. Nobody knows if a player will even last that long, let alone stay productive. Second, while a very select few players may enjoy that luxury, it protects the owners from their own stupidity in granting such deals.

The owners have stated they'll lock out the players on 9/15 if a new agreement isn't reached. Everybody loses, especially the fans. The players have expressed a willingness to play on under the terms of the current agreement, if need be, while negotiations continue. Unless the owners are losing money hand over fist under the current deal, which I also doubt, the union position is much more reasonable.

The league wants to extend the number of years required for a player to become an unrestricted free agent from the current 7, to 10. That's crazy. The average length of an NHL career for a player is only 5-6 years. More players (5%) only last one single game in the NHL than players (4%) that play 1000 games. Seven years is bad enough to possibly be tied to a team that a player doesn't particularly care for, let alone 10.

The coup de grace is the league wants to eliminate the right of players to go to salary arbitration. In cases of disputes, what could possibly be fairer than both sides making their numbers pitch to an impartial third party, and letting them decide? If THAT goes away, and the owners get their way on everything listed above, the NHL will more closely resemble a plantation than a pro sports league.

Finally, though the figure is unclear, the union has agree to cut their percentage of the revenue and suggested the owners adopt a revenue sharing policy amongst themselves to help out teams in smaller markets. Seeing as how all the wins and losses count the same, regardless of who's playing who, to a certain degree the owners need each other to thrive. It will be interesting to see if they consider that.

Overall, the league is asking for WAY too much in the way of player concessions. If the union and players give in to all of it, they might as well forego the national anthems before a game and play Swing Low Sweet Chariot. Here's hoping cooler and more reasonable heads prevail on the league's side of the negotiating table, or we might not see any pro hockey for quite a while.