I think this is a very interesting article, much more so than the ones we're reading from places like Sportsnet, CBC or TSN. I don't feel sorry for the owners after reading this...
"Injustice League"
February 20, 2005 -- IT WASN'T enough for the NHL to humiliate the players and union boss Bob Goode now. Now it turns out that Gary Bettman and the coalition of small-market and hardline clowns who have seized control of the league decided to embarrass Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux on their way to smashing the PA.
This — more than cancellation of any season — will forever be the ultimate and indelible stain of Bettman's legacy. This — more than any labor disruption — will put an end to the NHL for now and forever as a respected and respectable enterprise.
What's next, the Stanley Cup as a urinal in the NHL executive washroom?
They might as well burn the uniforms. They might as well throw away the keys to the rinks. As currently led, the NHL is a Mickey Mouse operation. If what happened yesterday at the St. Regis Hotel is allowed to stand, no sponsor, no network, no fan will ever again make an emotional or financial investment in the league.
Burning the village down to save it wasn't enough for Bettman and his cabal. They had to spread radioactive material over the landscape, too. To the victors, go the spoils. They should all get lost.
It isn't over until it's over and even then, where the NHL is concerned, it may not be over. So perhaps these words will have to be tempered later today or tomorrow. But the fact of the matter is this. If the NHL does not allow the NHLPA a peace-with-honor settlement by the end of the weekend, the league is finished as a respectable enterprise.
Finished.
There may have been confusion within the union this week as to an end-game strategy, but there will be no confusion now as to the identity of the enemy. Believe it. The NHLPA will emerge from this stronger and more united than ever, no matter the identity of its executive leader.
There will be no capitulation this summer. There will be one focus now — to destroy the NHL, even if it costs the players more millions to do so. They've got their cause again.
This was reprehensible business the league, its commissioner and its intractable, selfish, greed-driven and power-hungry zealots conducted yesterday. Nothing more than that. The league laid a trap for the PA by floating the message for two days to the union that it would be willing to negotiate a hard cap of up to $45 million per team. The league invited the union to New York under that pretense. And then reneged.
Bettman yesterday refused to come off the $42.5M offer that he had placed on the table Tuesday night, some 15 hours before he announced cancellation. They reneged on good faith. And, more incredibly, they reneged on implied promises to Gretzky and Lemieux. Neither is likely to ever forgive Bettman or the owners who stabbed them in the back.
Jeremy Jacobs in Boston has blood on his hands here, Jacobs of Boston who lives in Buffalo and has NFL-envy so bad he reeks of it. Florida and Nashville and Edmonton have blood on their hands here, all of them. Imagine: Edmonton stabbing The Great Gretzky in the back.
The players have every right to be enraged, just as they have had every right to be enraged straight through the process. The league that has time after time after time engaged in bait-and-switch tactics remained true to form yesterday. They lured the PA in. Too bad for the league and for Bettman that the athletes refused the offer to wiggle on their hook.
That's bad enough. What could not have been expected was the betrayal of Gretzky, who, for the last three weeks expended enormous political capital in a lobbying effort to convince small-market clubs that reaching a deal to save this season was a sheer necessity to save the NHL.
Gretzky, intensely uncomfortable as a lightning rod and whose nature is to respect authority and avoid controversy, was recruited with Bettman's blessing by larger-market owners who understand that a $45M cap represents a major victory for ownership. Gretzky worked the phones, he used everything at his disposal, he flew into New York believing that good faith had won the day and that sanity and realism would prevail.
All that was needed was Bettman's recommendation of the deal for presentation to the Board for a majority vote. It would have passed under that scenario. But no.
And now The Great One knows. Now he knows just as everyone else does that the NHL is shut down by a rigged process in which Bettman and eight hard-liners can veto the wishes of the majority, can veto good sense, can veto the NHL.
For shame.
