alright, here's my take. First off I will say that the players are mostly at fault. They need to realize that they are not playing a "national sport". The average salary in the NHL is 1.8million compared to the NFL at 1.3million and MLB at 2.2million. At first glance you may think, well the NHL is right in the middle, and this is correct but not when you take into account the revenue these teams generate before the season even starts. Each NFL team receives 75million from their national tv deal while each NHL team receives 2million. I'm not sure what MLB receives but I'm guessing its substantially more then the NFL. NHL teams spend 75% of their total revenue on paying players, while the NFL is around 55%. Just because there are NHL teams in all the major North American cities doesn't mean the NHL is one of the "BIG 4" sports on this continent. While I may blame the players for the problems the owners are not completly free of blame. Yes, the players are making crazy amounts of money, but who pays it to them?? The owners, of course. However, when the player takes the team to salary arbitration the owners are forced to pay whatever the arbitrator decides, release or trade that player. Last season, of players that went through salary arbitration, they where, on average awarded a 75% pay increase!! Does this sound like the real world?? Not the one I know.
Anyways I think this lockout will last at least until Christmas, but remember, the players are not getting any pay-checks during this time so it may end sooner then some think. In the infamous words of Patrick Ewing commenting on the huge money pro athletes make he was quoted to say "yah, we may make alot of money, but we also spend alot of money"
-- Edited by jaymo at 20:32, 2004-09-16
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Jamie Groening
Team Hailstorm #10
2003 and 2004 C4 Champions
5th 2005 MR Series
greedy players who suposedly are "playing the game they love" wouldnt play for soooooo much if they really loved the game
if i could play pball professionally, i would only take what i needed to have a healthy semi-wealthy family... and by semi wealthy i dont mean a couple porsches in the drive way i mean, maybe a rx-8 or something
i personally believe its a combination of both... the owners and the players. Chad has a strong point that if the players trully loved the sport... they wouldnt need the big bucks to play... just enough to live off of. But at the same time to.. if the owners hadnt originally offered the players the big bucks, then at the same time there wouldnt be a problem with players tryign to get more and more. Lets face it, if you were in the players positions... were u get to do something u love for money and u got offered a tonne of money to do it... im pretty sure you wouldnt say oh dont worry about it ill only take half of what ur offering me. But again i think a lot of that has changed... i dont think theyres many players out there that really play for the love of the game anymore, its now become a business. All in all i think it has to do with a lot of factors, but mainly the players to blame and secondly the owners. Im actually infavour of the lockout however, who knows maybe with the costs of a NHL team going down... Winnipeg could see another NHL team. Even tho that seems like a long ways down, its quite possible if the costs go down.
