ANALYSIS : What NHL Must Do, and Soon

Baseball players went on strike Aug. 12, leading to the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years. Hockey is in suspended animation for two weeks. NFL teams are squeezing under salary caps for the first time. NBA officials have talked about locking players out around Thanksgiving.

Anyone detect a pattern here?

Writing sports stories--and reading them--requires a degree in labor law.

The focus here is on hockey, scene of the most recent and most ridiculous dispute.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman calls the two-week negotiating period he ordered last Friday a postponement. The players call it a lockout. Either way, it’s absurd that the season did not start on Saturday.

This was hockey’s chance to grab the spotlight and shake its old, roller-derby-on-ice image. Baseball fans might have tuned in. Advertisers who had no baseball games to sponsor might have dropped dollars in NHL teams’ coffers. The league might have built on the excitement it generated last spring, when a competitive regular season was capped by exciting playoffs and the New York Rangers’ once-in-a-millenium victory.

No, Bettman had to go and shoot himself in the skates. He is going to get owners the salary cap--make that salary-revenue link--he promised them or he will die trying. Or the NHL will.

Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHL Players Assn., is equally responsible for this mess. They had all summer to work on it, yet both chose to hide behind technicalities. He didn’t respond to our letter, Goodenow says. Well, he didn’t want to sit down with us 10 days ago, Bettman says. You didn’t have to take away players’ travel expenses and meal money, Goodenow says. Well, I had to get you back to the bargaining table somehow, Bettman says. And so on.

On Sunday, Day 2 of the postponement, Bettman and Goodenow decided they can’t meet until Tuesday. What are they waiting for? Will someone please gather Bettman, Goodenow and their fleets of attorneys, lock them in a room with a phone and a takeout menu and forbid them to leave until they are close to a deal?

Nor are the players innocents. Chris Chelios’ speculation that someone might harm Bettman’s family was incendiary and stupid. Montreal defenseman Matthieu Schneider had no business writing an offensive message to Bettman on his helmet and wearing it throughout a practice while photographers snapped away. Cut the derogatory comments about Bettman’s short stature and lack of hockey experience. Maintain your professionalism and you come out of this with some integrity, if there’s any left to be had.

Bettman is a businessman. That’s what he was in the NBA, that’s what the owners hired him to be and that’s what the NHL needs. You want someone who knows more about hockey? John Ziegler had hockey ties, but the game’s growth outstripped his administrative talent and his vision.

Ziegler’s idea of a TV contract was SportsChannel America, a cable network unavailable in most NHL cities. Bettman got the NHL national, over-the-air exposure on Fox. Ziegler was content to run an old boys’ club. Bettman has enticed Nike--whose sponsorship fueled the NBA’s explosive growth--and other major corporations to back the NHL.

So much for mudslinging. Here are a few suggestions for bridging the gap that separates players and management on key issues:

Players should accept the NHL’s entry-level pay scale, which would cover their first three seasons. In return, the clubs would be allowed to write into contracts substantial bonuses to reward production. What’s wrong with making unproven players earn their salaries? Players can stipulate that pay increases be based on their total earnings, not only their base salary.

They agree upon unrestricted free agency after age 28, but the NHL wants one player per team to be designated a “franchise player” and would give the player’s old team the right to match offers to him. If he leaves, the team that lost him gets a compensatory draft pick. Scrap the “franchise player” idea, the right to match and the draft pick. Make free agency free.

For players ages 22-28, the NHL would give clubs the right to match offers to their free agents. Compensation to clubs that lose premier players in this category would be two or three first-round draft picks (it’s now five). So far, so good, but then the NHL wants to eliminate salary arbitration. Players want to keep it. We say forget arbitration if the other restrictions are lifted. Easier free agency is worth more than arbitration. Two first-round picks as compensation is hefty but not prohibitive.

Now the tough one: Who pays the freight?

Owners want a graduated levy on payrolls starting at $250,000 over a set limit. Players say that would restrict spending on salaries. They want a flat 5.5% levy on payrolls and gate receipts. Both sides would pool the money and re-distribute it to small-market clubs.

How about a very gradual payroll levy, to be adjusted if the resulting pool is not enough to help small-market clubs or is more than needed? In addition, a hefty percentage of future expansion fees would go into the pool. The Mighty Ducks and Florida Panthers each paid $50 million to join the NHL last year, so the next entrants are likely to pay admission fees of about $60 million each.

Put $20 million of that in the pool, and it should work. Expansion is about two years off, so that would give the NHL next season to try this plan and determine how much expansion money to throw in the pool.

Players want a bigger piece of the revenue pie, and they deserve it. But they must realize this is still a moderately sized pie. While the Fox deal was a breakthrough for the NHL, the $155 million it will receive is merely one-tenth the amount Fox is paying the NFL for NFC rights alone. The other major sports leagues have lucrative, multi-network deals that climb into the billions. The NHL doesn’t. You can’t share what you don’t have.

There’s still reason to believe the season will start Oct. 15. That’s because Bettman, a caustic but shrewd negotiator, left himself maneuvering room by saying he would only have to see progress and “good faith” negotiations to let the season start, rather than requiring a deal to be in place.

Bettman doesn’t want to be remembered as the commissioner who canceled the season and he doesn’t want potential advertisers and expansion owners scared off by labor strife. Both sides acknowledge that they haven’t made their best offer, but they must put it on the table soon. When that happens, Bettman will declare enough progress was made to let the games begin.

Until then, we can only wonder if everyone involved has played too much hockey without a helmet.