THE NHL : New Agreement Might Turn Out to Be Merely a Case of Icing

It was hockey’s biggest faceoff: 22 NHL owners against 564 players in a struggle that brought the league to a standstill for 10 days and endangered its very existence.

The NHL’s first strike is over, but some questions remain:

Who won?

Who lost?

Was it worth it?

Is it really over, or was the strike merely the first skirmish in what may erupt into an war?

That last question is the most intriguing. The owners see the new collective bargaining agreement, which expires in 17 months, as a stop-gap measure, a steppingstone toward a era of revenue sharing and a salary cap.

The owners still believe that they cannot survive in the league’s current inflationary atmosphere. Their only hope, they insist, is to limit player salaries.

What the players’ piece of the action will be remains to be negotiated.

In the NBA, where revenue sharing was born and has grown into a huge success, the players receive 53%. According to the NHL owners, their players are already getting 64% of the revenue.

The players are sticking to the contention they held before and during the strike, that the owners are not being fair in what they consider revenue. The players maintain that areas of arena revenue, such as parking and concessions, are not included. They also want the $150 million in entry fees from the three expansion teams thrown into the pot.

Without all that revenue included, the players say, there can be no revenue sharing.

The sides have 17 months to hassle over the figures. They should start early, using the economic committee established as part of the agreement.

But unless there is some give and take, September of 1993, when the current agreement expires, will look a lot like September of 1991, when the last one ran out.

Which brings us to the winners and losers.

Certainly the players made some short-term gains. They got input in selecting salary arbitrators, opened the door to free agency a bit more, though nowhere near as wide as they wanted; more than doubled their playoff revenue, and increased their medical benefits and pension fund. They also got the language they wanted on trading cards.

But the biggest thing they won is respect. After 25 years of existence, their union finally got a voice. Whatever the course of the league, the owners now know the players can speak up with one voice and must be treated as equal partners.

As for the owners, they got the short-term agreement they wanted to make sure there is no long-term run to financial disaster. They got the four extra regular-season games they need to provide the money required by some elements of the new agreement. They avoided what, for them, is a nightmare--total free agency. And they managed to hang onto almost all of the entry draft, losing only one of the dozen rounds rather than the six proposed by the players.

As for the trading-card issue, the owners didn’t lose a thing by granting the players the rights to their likenesses. The players will receive 68% of the revenue from those cards, but that’s the same percentage they’ve been getting for 21 years.

As for individual winners and losers, certainly William Wirtz, owner of the Chicago Blackhawks, was the big loser. Chairman of the board of governors, Wirtz was the most vocal and visible of the hard-liners, a group that included some who were willing to strike until December and perhaps irreparably damage the league rather than give in to the players.

The moderates, led by the Kings’ Bruce McNall, won over the majority of the owners.

A few months ago, owners were blaming McNall for destroying the league’s financial structure with his exorbitant salaries. Now, they were coming to him to save the league.

Don’t be surprised if McNall, by virtue of his new power, is eventually asked to replace Wirtz.

On the players’ side, the Kings’ Wayne Gretzky stepped in and kept the lines of communication open. He met with both Bob Goodenow, the NHL Players Assn.’s executive director, and with John Ziegler, the NHL president, at their request.

Neither Ziegler nor Goodenow emerged from this unscathed. Ziegler was shown to be--no surprise--a largely powerless puppet of the owners.

That is not his fault, but if it appears that the economic committee is not going to avert another crisis in 17 months, the owners would be well advised to dump Ziegler and give up some of their power to a commissioner who could bring labor and management together and lead both into a new era for the NHL, an era of increased exposure and marketing.

Is there another David Stern out there?

As for Goodenow, he certainly deserves credit for pushing the union far beyond the timid limits set by his predecessor, Alan Eagleson.

But there were rumblings at the end that Goodenow had to be led to a settlement by his players. There was a widely circulated theory among the owners that Goodenow’s real goal was to decertify the union and seek the players’ rights through the courts.

The fact is, the strike established Goodenow as a force for years to come, with power far beyond that wielded by Ziegler.

Goodenow certainly won’t be replaced.

So was it worth it?

The fans say no. But fans always say that. They don’t want to hear about big salaries and poor owners and free agents. They simply want their hockey.

They forget, or don’t want to remember, that sports is more business than athletics.

If the fans believe that their own rights are being taken away in their businesses, they want the right to strike.

But they have come back. They always do.

So the players satisfied some demands and became players on the financial side as well. The owners avoided serious alterations in their game and gained the opportunity to work for their dream of revenue sharing. And the fans got their hockey back.

Which leaves only one question, to be answered in the next 17 months: Did the settlement produce peace in our time, or merely peace for a little more time?