Now the puck is in Donald Fehr’s end, and the union head will have to perform the stuff for which he was hired. He’ll certainly reject the offer today which the league made Tuesday that protects current contracts with deferred payments despite a 12 percent reduction in the players’ pool.
Fehr’s reputation as a union whiz with ballplayers will now be tested against Gary (2-for-2) Bettman.
The NHL’s sudden, unexpected 50-50 proposal to salvage an 82-game season bears a palpable scent of desperation, almost as if the league felt urgency to reverse public opinion and turn it against the locked-out Players Association.
It did so Tuesday with its proposal, and Fehr will try to find a way to negate or erase the public perception that 50-50 is generally fair everywhere. He may have to couch the debate over the players/owners revenue split in terms other than percentage, as he did with his last offer of a diminished, but finite increase in the player pay pool, from $1.87 billion to $2.1 billion over three years.
Fehr objected to the primary concept, that the players should accept a signficant pay cut after seven straight years of record revenue. He told the players and agents the proposal would result in a $1.6 billion cut in player salaries over six years. Fehr said it would mean a loss of $230 million this season.
He also suggested that the “make whole” provision of protecting current contracts kicks the 12 percent can down the road, with those future paybacks counting against the pay pool in those payback years.
The players received 57 percent of hockey revenue last season, the percentage rising from 54 percent at the beginning of the salary cap in 2005. It has been suggested that the union might accept an average rate of 53 percent over six years, starting at 50 percent, going to 52 percent the second year before reaching 54 percent in the final four years.
But the union will want to get away from share percentages, since the NHL has already staked out the popular 50-50 spot, having had the sage advice of a focus group.