For the eight remaining hockey fans in the United States, this has been a tough week for us. We have been through as many deadlines as Robert Downey Jr. trips to rehab and finally a cancelltion, but as we head into the weekend there is speculation that the players and owners will be meeting this weekend in hopes of finding a resolution to this mess.I’m talking to you Bob Goodenow. This mess is yours, now you better go fix it. For most of this lockout, I was all over Gary Bettman for not negotiating in good faith, but when push came to shove, Bob, your guys caved and now you have no choice but to put your tail between your leagues and go to the league and pray they will give you a fair deal.
Goodenow botched this from the beginning. If he was going to consider a cap at some point, he should have done this earlier, but instead he had his troops believe that there would never be a cap and that it would be in their best intrest to dig in as long as it took to get what they wanted.
See Bob misjudged his people. He thought that they were all in as a group and under no circumstances would anyone except a cap, but he didn’t realize that there were a large group of players out there that would be willing to go for the hard cap if the number was large enough.
This has to be one of the biggest blunders in sports-labor history. Before you take a hard line stance like they did, you have to understand completely where your people stand. Even if it is a small group, you have to be prepared for them to make a move at some point that may go against what you believe in.
When this happened, you totally played into the owners hands. The whole time I could argue that one of Bettman’s biggest goals on his way to getting a cap was to break the union in the process. He is coming very close to accomplishing this at this point.
After the group of players went behind the unions back to try to get a deal, it proved that the union was not holding up like they once thought it would. At this point Bettman knew it was a matter of time that he had them where he wanted them.
I also don’t doubt that the cancellation was one last threat to the union. Bettman figured if he couldn’t get a deal with one final deadline, he would cancel the season hoping that more players would continue to cave so they could get a deal done.
Why would this finally be the threat that finally forced everyone to look in the mirror? I believe it was the finality of the cancellation. It forced people from both sides to wake up the next day and realize what they had just done.
Think about it this way, you get really hammered and wake up and realize the damage you did to your bank account the night before and the damage you just did to your reputation. This is how these people had to feel on Thursday after the cancellation was announced.
This is why I think that more players than ever are trying to do whatever it takes at this point to come to some type of compromise to get the best deal possible at this point.
These guys aren’t stupid they know the longer they hold out at this point the worse the deal that they can get will be.
Look if Bob wants to keep his job, he better get a deal. He dug a hard line in the sand and told his troops that the owners would cave, but he didn’t realize how much business they meant this time. If I were him, when I send Ted Saskin to NYC this weekend, I would have him take the best deal possible and end this mess.
Some will say that if a deal is made that it is to late for there to be a season and that a 28 game season with a Cup winner would be tainted.
I say who the hell cares. If we don’t get a deal done now I guarantee you that we will be sitting in the same situation a year from now. The best deals get done when people are under pressure.
This season may be short, but what it will do is allow the sports to move pass this mess towards the future. It will also allow them to start to look at rule changes that will make the game better.
By getting a deal done now and having the entire off-season to look at the situation it will give the league time to come up with ways to improve the game.
As far as the owners are concerned ,you may be in a great position at this point. You have a huge crack in this union, but the long-term damage of the sport will lessen if you find a way to get this done this weekend and not deal with the courts and all that mess that will alienate the fans more.
To all involved, I hope the aftermath of Wednesday’s announcement was a wakeup call and whoever is in New York this weekend will do whatever is in their power to make a deal.