[NHL] Players or Owners?

[Galley]

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=knig...night&type=lgns

My long-term solution: The players agree to three years with a hard cap tied to revenue; if by the end of the 2006-2007 season, total salaries go down less than 24 percent (the rollback offered by the union), the cap stays. If salaries go down more than 24 percent factoring in inflation, the cap vanishes.

How do you save the struggling teams? You don't. If the owners need 30 teams when only 22 are viable, they can prop them up themselves, as reportedly could happen to Anaheim.

The players shouldn't agree to a harsh cap (say, $28 million) designed to keep these teams alive because the Nashvilles, Floridas and Buffalos haven't proved that they deserve to be kept alive.

My long-term solution: Hold a thrilling 12-team single-round elimination playoff featuring every on-the-brink franchise. But not for playoff extinction. For real extinction.

The six winning teams get league subsidies that must be poured back into payroll. The six that get knocked out get truly knocked out -- they cease to exist.

Now that'd get ownership motivated to win!

What about the leadership vacuum? Fire Bettman, who led the NHL into the expansion mess, and replace him with someone who wants his legacy to be great hockey.

What about the lack of anything close to a strong national TV deal? Excellent question. There is no sure-fire answer, except my Outsider's long-term solution:

ESPN is desperate for programming. The NHL is desperate for coverage. Why not sell the NHL to ESPN . . . not as programming, but the whole thing?

ESPN buys out the rest of the owners, allows them to stick around as figureheads, creates ESPNH for full-time hockey, gets Teddy Atlas to analyze the best brawls, names Barry Melrose commissioner, and I've just saved hockey.

Or cursed it for eternity.

Sounds good to me! 24 teams seems right to me. :yes:

[xxpor]

as much as i wish it was the owners, im going to have to blame the NHLPA.  For too long players have been overpaid for skills that are par with peewee level leagues, players are expecting NFL like salaries even if teams and the league cant even find a decent TV contract or any publicity beyond the cities of the original 6 teams and the other 4 Canadian teams. Lets face it, NHL is probably below tennis in popularity, players expect too much, people barely show up to games and games are just boring now.  On RDS there was a stat that showed differences between today and 10years ago when there were 4x less shutouts, more than a handful of 50 goal scorers (compared to none last year), more 100pt scorers.  The owners have taken on the burden, when they're losing the $ the only people benefitting are the players, i dont see how we could blame the owners.  The only thing id blame Bettman for is expanding to Carolina, Nashville and Miami

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:yes: :yes:

[Joey992]

I almost wish that the NBA and MLB had the same issues with revenue. Then maybe the salaries wouldn't be so inflated in those sports.