When the NHL lockout began, my prediction was that the season would be cancelled. I stand by that prediction, even though it looks like some progress had been made. The owners and players are meeting directly as I write this, a meeting I think the players are fools to have accepted. They hired Donald Fehr to work on their behalf, and they’re sidelining him. It’s akin to one of my firm’s clients deciding to deal with Social Security by himself, without firing us. What do you think you’re paying us for?
My prediction was that, even with Fehr, that the players would get hosed when they eventually agreed on a new deal. Owners always, always, always, win labor battles. Time is on their side. After all, professional athletes only have so many years in which their bodies are in good enough shape to play at the highest level. Generally speaking, the owners have other businesses to keep their coffers full while the game is on hiatus.
Fans are usually on the side of the owners, as well, providing them with a cudgel to beat the players into submission. This seems to not be the case with this NHL lockout. The cartoon supervillian aura Gary Bettman has among fans does him and the NHL no favors, and the fact that this lockout comes just a few short years after the last work stoppage, which fans were told was necessary to preserve the health of the game, wins him no PR points.
The owners seem to be taking hockey away from fans for no reason other than to wring a few more dollars out of the players…because they can. The players have done an effective job of leveraging social media to show that they “just want to play.” By reducing/eliminating fan pressure to take a bad deal just to get hockey back, the NHLPA has negated what is usually a very effective weapon for owners in sports labor disputes.
What should worry the owners is the reaction of fans like me. I’m an avid hockey fan who closely follows all three NY metro area teams. My wife and I usually go to a couple games or so every year, and I catch most of the Islander games on TV. As the lockout drags on, I find that I’m not missing hockey that much. I follow lockout news, but I don’t really miss watching the NHL. Once the lockout is over, I’ll probably come back to the game, but I can guarantee that money we would have spent on hockey will go to other interests at this point. Money I would have spent on games/concessions/parking, or a new jersey is going to something else.
I don’t feel bad about it, either. The NHL is not the be-all or end-all of professional hockey, but it claims to be the steward of the game, and it has completely abdicated that duty. Even if the owners get everything they ask for, I’m entirely confident that we’ll be back in this same position when that CBA expires. Unless and until the NHL can show that it’s ready to be a responsible steward of the game, me (and my money) will be doing something else.
