THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, January 17, 2013

NHL apologizes for being late, and will have players make it up for them

Terrible apology.

First, they never say “I’m sorry”.  In order to express remorse, you MUST say “I’m sorry”.  If you say “I apologize”, you simply acknowledge a wrong, but without expressing remorse.

Secondly, even if you want to accept “apologize”, they don’t even mention their culpability.  They say “for the time we’ve missed”.  That’s like coming home late for dinner because of bad traffic.  Like, it couldn’t be helped.

“I apologize for being late, as the traffic was terrible.”  That’s what the NHL just said.

But, the NHL is the one that caused the accident!  They locked out the players.  They can’t even acknowledge it.  They’re hoping by not saying it, people will forget about who to blame!  Even some of their NHL.com “reporters” go out of their way to not say “lockout”.

Anyway, after that complete opening fail, they want to earn your trust by… having someone else play their hearts out for you!  The players were willing to play with an expired CBA.  They were always ready to play their hearts out. 

So, the NHL caused an accident, made you late for dinner, and is going to get their mechanic to work extra hard on your car, and even though the mechanic was going to do that anyway.  And for this, they expect absolution.

Does the NHL offer you free NHL Center Ice?  No, of course not, because their “partners” wouldn’t allow it.  Some of their partners (Comcast, Cablevision) happen to own the Flyers and Rangers.  And I think inDemand is owned by Comcast.  Anyway, I understand that Cablevision still wants their 49$ cut out of the 99$ they’d otherwise charge for a 48-game season.  But, why is the fan paying that 49$?  Why can’t the NHL give the fans a rebate on that?  So, you pay the 49$ to Cablevision, and then you fill out the rebate form at NHL.com, and the NHL gives you back 49 NHL bucks, which you can apply to tickets, concessions, or merchandise.  Instead, Bettman goes on the radio and now makes his partners complicit in the idea that the fans can’t get a free NHL Center Ice package.

Finally, they end their apology letter by asking us to forget everything and focus on the players.  This is like Congress blocking aid to Sandy for two months while eventually agreeing to the proposal all along.  It was a ridiculous wait.

The only apology I’d like to see is Bettman/Daly’s performance in early December following Fehr’s pronouncement that they had agreement on the dollars, and were right on top of each other everywhere else, while they were talking about hills to die on and comparing Fehr’s statements to being a billion dollar apart the last time.  The deal they eventually agreed to was pretty much what Fehr was talking about in December.  It was five weeks lost, for no other reason than whatever motivates Congress: talk loud and hope no one notices that you are saying nothing.

And if someone from the NHL happens to read this: if you have taken offense to what I just said, then I apologize.  Dinner will be waiting.

Monday, January 14, 2013

NHL, NHLPA MOU

On NHLPA’s site, they have the 24-page MOU.  Right there, on the first line, it says either side can opt-out after 8 years. And yet, right there, on the second line, it says the opt-out period is Sept, 2019. Since the first season of the CBA ends June 2013, that would mean the seventh season ends June 2019. In any case, they also said the agreement terminates Sept 2022, which is three years after the opt-out, not two. I can’t believe that everyone who read this has signed off on it.

Ten-Year Agreement with mutual right to terminate after eight (8) years.

NHL shall have the first option to terminate, exercisable by no later than September 1, 2019. NHLPA shall have the second option to terminate, exercisable by no later than September 15, 2019.

Expiration date on September 15, 2022 unless otherwise terminated in accordance with the terms set out in this Agreement.

UPDATE: Looks like I fail basic inference.  The opt-out DECLARATION is after seven years, with the actual ending of the CBA after eight years.  So, gives everyone a one year lead time to play under the soon-to-opt-out CBA.

I also changed the title of the thread, but not the URL of the thread.

Friday, January 04, 2013

“The NHL is using this suit in an attempt to force the players to remain in a union�

If it’s to the advantage of management that a union exists, and if said management goes so far as to file a lawsuit to get the courts to force the union to exist, that seems to me to be a pretty good reason to not have a union.

I vote: chaos.

Every now and then, a bloodless revolution is good, and hopefully, that’s where we’re heading with the NHL.

Thursday, January 03, 2013

Latest NHL developments

Here’s a recap of a recap.  The two compliance buyouts is only common sense.  NHL was at zero, and now accepted two.  I doubt any team would buyout three of their players.  So, that’s a good number.

That buyout amount is not going to count against the cap (that is the reason for having the buyout in the first place, to get yourself under the cap), and… big news… will count against the 50/50 split… as it should.  I’ve never understood the player position on this.  If DiPietro has 30MM$ in salary left, then that’s going to count against the player share over the remaining years.  If Islanders buy him out at 20MM$, then, of course that has to count as well.  Now, it obviously should not count all in the same year, and if that’s the sticking point, then I’m with the players there.  But, it has to count within the 50/50 at some point.

The other one is the 20% variance (meaning 20% of the first year to establish the variance AMOUNT).  As a practical example, if you want to sign someone for a 6 year 42MM$ deal, you can pay him at 12MM$ the first year, then 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 for the final five years.  The best players won’t get that flexibility.  Those guys would say sign a 6 year 60MM$ deal, and the most front-loading would work is: 12MM$ for each of the first three years, then 10, 8, 6 for the next three.  Which, honestly, is fair.

Therefore, all those things seem reasonable and fair to me.

I didn’t hear anything about the CBA length other than it’s 10 years with some contingency.  My guess is that the reopener is either 8 years or 5 billion$ in revenue, whichever comes first.  Something like that.  If league grows at 8% each year, then it hits the 5 billion$ level after six years.  Considering that it might take a year or two for NHL to recover to it’s 3.3 billion$ base of last season, it’s probably going to happen in year 8 anyway.  But, it protects either side if they see revenues go up like crazy.  But, like I said, players should accept a 20 year CBA because there’s nothing stopping owners from bringing it to a 45/55 split.  Players have no leverage, not unless the league is so profitable that the league will finally decide to stop with the lockout business.

The outstanding issue is pensions, and, I’m not in a position to understand it.  And, my guess is that 95% of the players aren’t either.  Maybe George Parros understands it.  Of all the issues to leave unresolved at the end, this should not have been it.  The players are going to rely on the experts, and the experts are probably going to have a very hard time explaining it.

NHL is going to make their final proposal next week, and Fehr is going to take it to the players, and no matter how bad the pension plan is, the players will vote to accept.

Base scores

On Bill’s site, he was talking about converting scores in NFL to MLB, noting that 3 football points is like one MLB run.  I responded:

In MLB, it’s about 10 runs per win, while in NFL, it’s about 35 points per win. So, conversion is about 3.5 to 1. A 7-4 MLB game would therefore be about 24-14 in NFL (or really 27-17… it’s not just the multiple, but there’s a “base number” that each team gets). This is more obvious in NBA, where it’s about 30 points per win (similar to NFL), so 3:1 conversion to MLB. So, 7-4 MLB is like 109-100 in NBA. There’s a huge “base” number of points that each side gets, and then you do the multiplier. NHL is 6 to 7 goals per win, so 7-4 MLB is 5-3 in NHL. NHL is like MLB in that there’s no “base” scoring.

It also got me thinking how “true” a sport is in its scoring if there was no “base scoring”.  NBA gives you points basically for just possessions.  A huge amount of the scoring is simply based on having the ball in your hands.  Yes, you have to throw it in the basket.  But, what I’m trying to say is that the score differential in NBA is about the same as it is in NFL.  Basically, if you score an average of 5 more points per game in NBA, that means about the same as scoring 5 more points per game in NFL.  But, the total number of points per game is far different.

NFL could adopt a scoring system that gives you say a quarter point for every yard gained from the scrimmage line or something, and then we’d get a scoring system that might look more like NBA.  That is, you get points for possessions, but not for actually scoring.  I know, I know, in NBA, you get points only for the basket.  I got it.  When you make analogies, you are not making equivalencies.

It made me think of tennis, where the “points” you get, like yards in football, are not real points.  They only matter if you win the game.  And even the games don’t matter unless you win the set.

So, you can actually try to do the same thing with basketball.  For example, imagine you do tennis-style scoring in basketball.  You win a “game” if you get 4 or more unanswered points.  Once you have that, a new game resets.  So, the back-and-forth of getting two points is a wash.  Turnovers become a huge key.  If you make it 5 or more unanswered points instead, then you might see alot of 3-point attempts.  Imagine for example, you win a “game” if you need at least 5 unanswered points.  You score (that’s 2 points), the other teams come up court, but you steal, and score an easy basket (2 points, now at 4 points).  But if the other team scores, that wipes out your 4 points, rendering it meaningless.  Now your opponent is at 2 points.  Would be wild right?

Anyway, and this is just me, so I’m sure I’m in the minority, I don’t follow basketball because it just seems like an up-and-down game.  There’s no incentive to not be up-and-down.  There also doesn’t seem to be much randomness.  Well, I know there isn’t, because I’ve shown that to be true.  In a 48-minute game, the better team wins much more than the opponent.  I don’t know that that’s the best way to operate, especially in light of how MLB and NHL operate.  And even if that IS the best way to operate, I know that having an 82-game season is NOT the best way to operate.  And having 16-teams in the playoffs on top of that is not the best way to operate.  The NBA sucks as much of the randomness as possible to leave you with a very strong confidence that the team that wins the championship is indeed the most talented team in the league.  But, do we really want that?  Don’t we want to see some huge upset occasionally?  The other sports offer that because of their game structure or schedule.  NBA doesn’t.

Anyway, just a thought that popped into my head.

Please explain “escrow” in one tweet

Here is the issue: in the NHL (and NFL, NBA), players get a share of the revenue, akin to a salesman earning commissions.  The difference is that the salesman only gets paid after the sale goes through.  So, the company gets the money in hand from the customer, and then at every pay period, the salesman gets his cut.

Sports leagues operate a little differently.  The have a STRONG expectation of getting huge revenue.  Last year, the NHL collected 3.3 billion$.  Now, they were not guaranteed to collect 3.3 billion$, but they were strongly betting on getting at least 3 billion$.  The money also comes in waves, be it season ticket packages, or 5-yr or 10-yr sponsorship and TV deals.  A salesman would cut his cut on a cash flow basis, but, NHL players don’t operate like that.  Both sides agreed that player should get paid in a more traditional even flow, a fixed amount every two weeks.

So, what to do what to do.  The players, in total, signed for something like 1.9 billion$ (estimated for illustration).  Actually, they THINK they signed for 1.9 billion UNITED STATES DOLLARS.  The reality is they signed for 1.9 billion NHL BUCKS.  Remember, players get a share of the revenue, and if revenue is 0, players get 0.

Anyway, the NHL and NHLPA decided to presume that the NHL would collect 3 billion US$, of which 57% (or 1.71 billion US$) would go to the players.  Now, since the players actually signed for 1.9 billion NHL BUCKS, we have a conversion rate that is NOT 1:1.  Each NHL buck is worth 90 US Cents.  For those who lives in Canada for the longest time, these kinds of conversion are old hat to you.

Ok, so if a player signed for 10 million NHL bucks, he’s actually get 9 million US dollars, spread out over, say 13 pay checks.

But, like I said, money is rolling in at various waves.  The NHL and NHLPA check their bank accounts, and they see that money is coming in faster than expected.  That conversion rate of 90 US cents for each NHL buck was estimated just so that NHL players could get money while they were playing.  So, they could get SOMETHING.  At the end of the year, they see, lo and behold, that in the NHL players account, 1.88 billion US dollars came in, but that they only paid out 1.71 billion US dollars.  There is, in the NHL bank account, their “escrow” account, another 170 million US dollars that need to be distributed.  After the administrator takes their cut, whatever that is, say 1%, there’s still another 168 million US dollars to distribute.  That money, which is beind held in escrow, ALSO gets converted.  How?  Well, it’s based on the 1.9 billion NHL bucks that the players in all signed for with their NHL contracts.  In this case, each NHL buck gets converted to 8.8 US cents.

In all, the NHL players got their initial conversion of 90 US cents for each NHL bucks signed on their contract, and then another 8.8 US cents for each NHL bucks, for a final tally of 98.8 US cents.

Did the players “lose” money?  NO!  They were never guaranteed or promised 1.9 billion US dollars.  They were guaranteed 1.9 billion NHL bucks.  That does not convert 1:1 to US dollars, any more than the Canadian dollar is guaranteed to convert 1:1 to US dollars (or to anything really).

Which makes the idea of the make-whole… well, wholly laughable.  Players THINK they are signing for US dollars, but the reality is they are not.

Ok, so I spent several hundred words explaining all this.  Now, your job is to explain, in number of words that are no longer that ONE TWEET, how this works.

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Inertial fans

It’s a virtual certainty that if a league proposes more teams for the post-season, a majority of the fans oppose.  They oppose on the basis of dilution.  But, once a league has expanded the post-season, fans turn out, and they never then complain to reset it back to fewer teams. 

Fans seem to just love inertia.  They don’t want change.  It’s too upsetting.

I think leagues do themselves a disservice in trying to “sell” the idea of more teams, because they clearly are only presenting (part of) one side of the argument, while ignoring or otherwise diminishing the views of the other side.

In any case, fans seem to think that the regular season has established which are the “best” teams, and so, the fewer teams that advance, then the more fair the regular season was.  But, they seem to ignore the fact that you are not promoting the best teams but simply those that happen to achieve the best results.

Why not, for example, have a 29-game MLB season, and the two best teams in the league play for the World Series?  Well, experience has taught us that there’s alot of randomness in 29 games, and so, we don’t really just want the two teams that have achieved the most in one month to advance.  Indeed, the fewer the games you play, the more randomness you have, and the greater the likelihood that you knockout the better teams that simply went through bad luck.  And so, the smaller the season, the MORE the number of teams in the post-season required.

If you had a 290-game season, then a good portion of randomness has been knocked out, so you don’t need to have as many teams in the post-season.

Then there’s the issue of the number of games in each elimination round.  Again, the shorter the series the more randomness you have.  And so, you want a longer series so that the signal overcomes a bit more of the noise (though a seven game series is filled with noise).

I would definitely prefer a shortened NHL season to expand the number of teams in the post-season.  Increasing to 20 teams means that the top 12 teams get a bye, and the other 8 have a “play-in” series to be the final 4.  Even something as small as a best 2-of-3 would be fantastic.  First, it acknowledges that in a 48-game season there’s not much to distinguish between the 13th and 20th best-achieving teams (other than to give home ice advantage).  Secondly, it confers an additional advantage to the 1st through 4th place teams in not only getting a rest, but in facing a more exhausted team.  The 5th through 12th place teams cancel each other out in terms of getting a rest, though those 9th through 12th place teams probably had to battle to the final days to make the playoffs (and not be in the play-ins).

And who is crazy enough not to watch playoff hockey?

Monday, December 31, 2012

Fay Vincent on Donald Fehr

When your nemesis says nice things about you:

Fay Vincent didn’t hesitate to define Fehr as a man of ability and integrity with a politically framed sense of purpose.

“He’s very organized, very smart, very disciplined and very strategic,” Vincent, 74, said from his home in Florida. “And he’s devoted to the cause.”

That cause, Vincent added, isn’t just a matter of economics.

“He is a man of the left politically and temperamentally,” said Vincent, who served as baseball’s commissioner from 1989 to 1992—a period that included a 32-day lockout in 1990. “He’s very much convinced there is moral right on the side of the working player and that there are moral defects, if you will, on the side of the owners, the capitalists in baseball or hockey.”
...
Whatever fault Vincent may find with Fehr, the former commissioner described their dealings as “first-rate” and said it’s the NHL owners who have to come to their senses at this point, as baseball owners finally did.

“The insight that everybody comes to ultimately is that without the players there is no game,” Vincent said. “And you can fight with them only so long because you can’t get along without them. If you ever want to have a game and you’re an owner, you have to give them their way.”

His final advice to Fehr’s current opponents: “Make the best deal you can but don’t let it go on very much longer. The hemorrhaging is very serious.”

When Bettman retires, I wonder what everyone will say about him.

Friday, December 28, 2012

NHL’s makes latest final final final offer

Anyway, the latest is from Lebrun here.  Here are the issues:

1. Contract length: previously unlimited.  Players have offered 12 year term, then 10, now stand at 8.  Owners asked for 5 year, then moved to 5 years for other team’s players or 7 years or your own players (hello sign-and-trade!), and now are are 6/7.  Obviously, if they go with 7 years, they’ve got themselves a deal.  It took two weeks to go from 5/7 to 6/7.

2. 300MM$ in make-whole/transition.  Back on the table after being removed from the table in a voice mail.  Lesson?  You look foolish by doing the take it or leave it or take it back offers.

3. You can buy out one player outside the cap system, but buyouts remain as part of the 50/50.  Makes perfect sense that it stays within the 50/50, and if Fehr argued against that, I don’t get it.  I don’t understand why NHL wants to limit it to one buyout, especially since I doubt that a team is going to buyout more than two anyway.  Is it really that big a deal?  For either side?  This is one of those flip-the-coin issues, that this should get resolved by a flip the coin.  Who cares really.

4. 10% variance.  And there we go, I had proposed 12%.  A 10% drop year after year in salary means that the salary in year 7 is going to be 53% of the salary in year 1.  Fehr wanted 25% of lowest salary divided by highest salary (in an 8-year contract length), meaning an 18% variance would fit the bill.  Anyway, NHL went from 5% up to 10%.  Fehr had implied 18%, and so, we should be able to settle at 12% or so.  But really, 10% is perfectly fine.  Again, non-issue really.

5. Elsewhere it’s reported that the CBA length remain at 10 years with opt-out after 8, and NHLPA has offered 8/6.  Obviously, 9/7 is the deal.

It’s really insane that it took two weeks to get these breadcrumbs.  This could have been offered the day the NHL stomped their feet. 

What’s also weird is that Daly and Bettman have repeatedly said they are NOWHERE CLOSE to a deal.  And yet their offer barely moves the needle.  Which really means they think they are VERY CLOSE to a deal.  Which is what Fehr has been saying all along.  Which is what everyone else outside of the NHL braintrust has been saying, even among the NHL governors themselves.

This is Orwellian negotiations.  This is insane.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Integrity of a season

Tyler asks about the Bettman’s claim of the “integrity” of an NHL season.

In my view, the “integrity” issue is a non-issue.  We have no problem with the Canada Cup and World Cup in hockey or World Cup in soccer. 

Tyler however makes the point that in the old days with fewer teams, everyone played everyone else a large number of games, so a 44-game season had plenty of coverage in terms of head-to-head matchups.  And Bettman is implying as much with a 48-game season (meaning 2 to 4 games against each intra-conference game and zero inter-conference).  But, Tyler asks why not just 2 games against intra-conference opponents, so that even at 28 games, the season has “integrity” (as Bettman could define it).

Then we have the example of the NFL, which of course only plays 16 games, in a 32-team league.

It goes back to how much spread in talent there is.  And a long time ago, I showed the equivalency of a regular season length for the 4 sports.

If we treat the NFL’s 16-game season as the minimum number of games to have a season with “integrity”, the equivalency in the other sports is:
19 games NBA
48 games NHL
92 games MLB

So, Bettman is right, using the NFL standard (1 NFL game = 3 NHL games, in terms of what we learn about each team’s talent).  But I imagine a 14-game NFL season would also be acceptable, and so that brings us down to 42 games for an NHL season.  Furthermore, the NHL not only allows more teams in the playoffs, but they play more games in the playoffs.  Whereas an NFL team needs to play 3, maybe 4, games in the playoffs, an NHL team will play 16 to 28 games in a 4-round series. 

In NFL, the eventual winner will have played some 17 games in a regular 14-game season.  The equivalent in NHL would be 51 games including playoffs.  Strip out an average of 23 games for the Cup champion (or whatever it actually is), and it only needs 28 games of regular season play.

And in a 15-team conference, playing home-and-home against each team gives us 28 games.  That I think is the integrity point, if 14-game NFL regular season is your standard.

Monday, December 24, 2012

When Russia claims to better treat its business and workers, you know you are in bad shape

President of the second-best hockey league in the world offers his opinion on the NHL and NHLPA.

While we might have arguments with the players unions, we always think about the hockey first of all, and about everything else later.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Bettors and sports

About twenty years ago, Loto Quebec (the provincial government agency that regulates lotteries and gambling) introduced Mise-O-Jeu (Faceoff) that allowed betting on the NHL.  They basically gave odds for wins, and you multiplied all three odds to determine your payoff.  The NHL of course fought them, but, naturally, they lost.

It seems that this is the standard protocol, that the leagues keep fighting the government, they keep using the same arguments, the courts keep siding against the leagues not buying into their arguments.  Now, it’s MLB’s turn.  Here are some relevant articles, one with Selig’s deposition, and legal experts wondering why testimony is being redacted of the plaintiffs themselves.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Fehr speaks

Here are the highlights, and here is the interview.

How much should the NHL give to the players?

I was struck by the following information:

Indeed, according to the The U.S. Professional Sports Market & Franchise Value Report 2011, average franchise values in the first decade of this millennium increased 141% for the NFL (from $423 million to $1 billion), 101% for MLB ($233M to $491M), 78% for the NBA ($207M to $369M) and 54% for the NHL ($148M to $228M). This over a decade that witnessed a once-in-four-generations recession.

I have no idea what the company is (not Forbes), but you gotta figure whatever biases exist won’t be systematic toward or against one sport.  They also provide year-by-year valuations.  If we focus from 2006-2010, the total increase in valuations are as follows:

2006	2010	change	League
180	228	27%	NHL
353	369	5%	NBA
376	491	31%	MLB
898	1022	14%	NFL

Valuations increase in NBA has been almost nothing, but NHL has jumped since the last CBA to MLB-level increases.

I’ve said in the past that MLB GM’s are getting smarter, giving out less money per revenue to players.  The less players get, the more the franchise is worth.  NHL righted their model by dropping the share of revenue from 74% to 54%-57%.  That was a huge drop in share, and so, teams became more profitable, and so, they were worth more.

Did it swing too much?  Let’s look at multiple of valuation per dollar revenue:

Revenue	Worth	Multiple	League
98	228	 2.33 	NHL
127	369	 2.91 	NBA
210	491	 2.34 	MLB
265	1022	 3.86 	NFL

Interestingly, MLB and NHL are in about the same boat, they’ve gained in valuation in similar rate, and their multiple of worth per revenue is the same.  And yet, in pales in comparsion to the NBA, which barely has more revenue than NHL (really?!  I’m very surprised), anyway, 30% more in revenue, and yet each team is worth 60% more.

And the three non-NFL leagues combined are worth about the same as just the NFL, even though they have 64% more revenues.  Obviously, NFL is the model they aspire to.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Two faces of NHL, as seen by Larry Brooks

How many faces have thee, let Larry count the ways:

1.

Here is the league that just over a week ago was doing everything in its power to keep Don Fehr out of the bargaining process, and is now going to court to ensure he continues to represent the players in the bargaining process.

2.

For weeks now, the NHL has sent its messengers to deliver the message the NHLPA is not truly united behind Fehr and union leadership; that the players, left to their own decision-making process, would rush to accept whatever the league at the time had on the table.

Or, in another word, “Vote!�

Yet there in Paragraph 54 of the complaint is the NHL citing numerous examples of players articulating support for Fehr and the PA leadership which the league posits, “... do not suggest that the NHL players are unhappy with their Union representation [or] wish to oust current NHLPA leadership…â€?

3.

Paragraph 102 is a good one. For months the NHL has been telling anyone who would listen that up to 18 of its franchises lose money, with many of those franchises in need of life support. For months the league has been instructing us not to confuse revenue with profits.

Fair enough.

But then these are the league’s own words right there in Paragraph 102: “The system of common employment rules [the CBA] instituted in 2005 improved the financial stability of the entire NHL, including most of its clubs…â€?

Most of its clubs?

Really?

Hmm.

4.

What to make of the thought process behind Paragraph 62?

The combination of restrictions proposed by the NHL leading into and throughout the lockout is designed to limit the impact of free agency and funnel players toward teams they might not consider given a full plate of options.

Yet there is the NHL in Paragraph 62 suggesting every player in the league become a free agent if the NHLPA were permitted to disclaim or decertify.

“[Existing] contracts ...[would be] void and unenforcable by law,� in the league’s own words.

Goodbye Columbus!

NHL v NHLPA, Canada v USA

I’d like to know if Proskauer Rose has sister firms in Canada, because as Tyler notes:

In other words, it seems to me that while Canadian labour boards effectively saying “You guys have decided to operate under the jurisdiction of the NLRB and we’re not getting involved� is one thing, it’s a bit of a different thing for a Canadian court to say “You guys decided to operate under the jurisdiction of the NLRB and, even though you’ve stopped doing that, we’re still not going to get involved in what is now a dispute between [Canadian] Taylor Hall and the Edmonton Oilers.� If I was the NHLPA, considering a response to this, one of the areas that I’d be considering is the extent to which American courts have jurisdiction over the Canadian aspects of the dispute, which are far more significant than in the case of the NBA which has only one team in Canada and likely no cases of Canadian residents making contracts with Canadian teams.

Fehr/Fehr balance

This was written a few months back, but it’s a nice profile of Steve Fehr, with comments from both sides (Manfred on the management side and Orza / Fehr on the union side).  I wonder what Bill Daly is going to say in a few years.

“For me, it’s been an extraordinary thing,� Don Fehr said, “because when you are involved in bargaining, it really helps to have somebody who, first of all, is knowledgeable, is observant, knows how the game is played … [but who] knows you inside out and backwards, and perhaps, most importantly, is capable of telling you, probably more often than you want to hear, that you are full of shit.�

According to Manfred, the role Steve Fehr took in the 2002 baseball labor negotiations, when MLB and the players reached a deal just before the players went on strike, was “the most important thing he has done.� Prior to that negotiation, MLB and the MLBPA were unable to reach a labor agreement without a strike or a lockout eight times, going back to 1972.

Manfred noted that MLB and the MLBPA have been able to negotiate two CBAs without a work stoppage since that agreement. Without going into details of those 2002 negotiations, Manfred said Fehr was instrumental in getting a deal done and called him “a calming force� in labor negotiations in general.

Orza agreed with that characterization.

“In the 2002 negotiations, when things got pretty tough and we were close to having some problems that might have resulted in a major fight, Steve stayed pretty calm, cool and collected,� Orza said.

For his part, Steve Fehr would not say specifically what he did during those 2002 talks other than to stay focused on the issues at hand.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

NHL prepares a lawsuit the way we prepare a resume

Tyler notes that the NHL probably started drafting their lawsuit on or around November 22.  I thought it was odd that Ryan Miller was talking so openly about the dissolution of the union as a strategy, since that would seem to be something the league could use to note bad faith.  Anyway, as more evidence came in, the league would update the lawsuit, but not in “functional” form, but in date order.  Tyler notes how some paragraphs seem out of place, but can be explained if you simply log the complaints in date order.

I can’t believe that if both sides move one year toward each other, that we’d have an agreement in place.

This is insane.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Disclaimer of Interest!  Now we’ve got a party

Boy, has this been a long-time in coming.  But, it’s finally upon us, and it gives the league just enough time to deal with the players and get a 48-game season.  Damn, that Fehr is a genius!

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Dear Ira Podell

Please stop reporting this falsehood:

...with the variable in salary being no greater than a 25% difference between the highest-paid year of the deal and the lowest.

First of all, mathematically, you can’t say % difference between two numbers.  If someone has 20 pennies, and someone else has 40 pennies, what is the “% difference”?  Well, the guy who has 20 pennies has 50% less, and the guy who has 40 has 100% more.  But, there is no “% difference”.  To do a % difference, you need a common denominator.  Say, for example, there is a 7% difference in how much they revenue split is between the last CBA (57%) and this CBA (50%).

Secondly, and more importantly, the true offer is that the lowest salary is 25% of the highest salary (see: Sidney Crosby, which Fehr cited in his press conference).  So, he can have a 3MM$ salary in one year and 12MM$ in another year.  In other words, his lowest salary is 75% less than his highest salary.  75, not 25.

Now, I will absolve you somewhat, because Fehr in his own memo didn’t make it clear (at all).  But, please, you are driving me nuts with this false information of a key issue.