This is an excerpt from a much broader article from Yahoo!Sports' Trending Topics series from the popular Puck Daddy blog. Ryan Lambert aptly (and somehwat sarcastically towards the end) describes who the real losers would be in the event of another NHL lockout. In fact, his analysis would apply to a lockout in any major sport, not just hockey. Here's his work; definitely worth a read:
The first casualties of the NHL labor war
Millionaires and billionaires are fighting and that means we almost certainly won't have hockey for a couple months or more. We all — excluding super-rich NHL owners who don't care what you think as long as they can leech every possible cent from your checking account— agree that the lockout would be a bad thing, but for some the situation is considerably more dire.
Not the owners, of course. They're getting their $200 million from NBC regardless of whether there's a single NHL game this winter, allowing them a sort of parachute to hold them over while they try to bully the players into accepting their terms. And it's not the players, either, since they'll be getting escrow checks on Oct. 15, which should tide them over for a bit regardless of their work situations in other leagues.
And it's not even the fans, who will surely find other ways to distract themselves, such as by throwing their attentions headlong into the AHL, major juniors, NCAA, foreign leagues and perhaps even other sports like the NFL, while all this gets sorted out.
Nope, the real problem is that people who work for the teams are gonna get shafted because greedy owners don't give a rat's ass about anything but their bottom line, not that they have any duty to do so, I guess. To wit, the Calgary Flames have already revealed that they're going to be cutting the salaries for some (read: most) of their 175 full-time employees in the event of a lockout.
"What we would attempt to do is affect as few people as possible and as minimally as possible," team president Ken King told the Calgary Sun. "The plan is quite generous in that some people it won't affect at all."
Oh yes, extraordinarily generous. Let me just go out on a limb here and guess that one of the people who the plan won't affect has the initials K.K.
Hey by the way do the Flames get a cut of that $200 million TV deal? Just wondering.
The Flames famously made draconian cuts to their front office staffers' salaries during the last lockout — 40 percent in all. King assures that those kinds of cuts won't happen this time. In fact, the team is throwing around such largesse these days that those who don't want to take a paycut will be able to leave their jobs and then come back when the war is over. And with the job market in Calgary going so well right now, why wouldn't they?
As for the 1,200 or so the team employs for game nights? Good luck with everything, gang.
The reality is, though, that the Flames, despite being pretty villainous and two-faced about all this — literally taking some of the money people were set to earn and likely counting on for reasons beyond their control is a bad thing — aren't going to take it as far as other teams likely will. As Eric Francis points out, layoffs weren't uncommon around the league in the last lockout, and won't be this time around either.
"It's not the best situation, but few, if any, will say it's unfair when it's unveiled," said King.
Yes, I'm sure that the people losing income they depend upon to live and maybe falling behind on things like their mortgages so that warhawk owners like Calgary's Murray Edwards (approximate net worth $2.2 billion U.S.) can get a break on Jarome Iginla's $7 million salary through a 24 percent rollback or whatever.
That's totally fair. Everyone will definitely see it that way.
--Ryan Lambert | Puck Daddy
The first casualties of the NHL labor war
Millionaires and billionaires are fighting and that means we almost certainly won't have hockey for a couple months or more. We all — excluding super-rich NHL owners who don't care what you think as long as they can leech every possible cent from your checking account— agree that the lockout would be a bad thing, but for some the situation is considerably more dire.
Not the owners, of course. They're getting their $200 million from NBC regardless of whether there's a single NHL game this winter, allowing them a sort of parachute to hold them over while they try to bully the players into accepting their terms. And it's not the players, either, since they'll be getting escrow checks on Oct. 15, which should tide them over for a bit regardless of their work situations in other leagues.
And it's not even the fans, who will surely find other ways to distract themselves, such as by throwing their attentions headlong into the AHL, major juniors, NCAA, foreign leagues and perhaps even other sports like the NFL, while all this gets sorted out.
Nope, the real problem is that people who work for the teams are gonna get shafted because greedy owners don't give a rat's ass about anything but their bottom line, not that they have any duty to do so, I guess. To wit, the Calgary Flames have already revealed that they're going to be cutting the salaries for some (read: most) of their 175 full-time employees in the event of a lockout.
"What we would attempt to do is affect as few people as possible and as minimally as possible," team president Ken King told the Calgary Sun. "The plan is quite generous in that some people it won't affect at all."
Oh yes, extraordinarily generous. Let me just go out on a limb here and guess that one of the people who the plan won't affect has the initials K.K.
Hey by the way do the Flames get a cut of that $200 million TV deal? Just wondering.
The Flames famously made draconian cuts to their front office staffers' salaries during the last lockout — 40 percent in all. King assures that those kinds of cuts won't happen this time. In fact, the team is throwing around such largesse these days that those who don't want to take a paycut will be able to leave their jobs and then come back when the war is over. And with the job market in Calgary going so well right now, why wouldn't they?
As for the 1,200 or so the team employs for game nights? Good luck with everything, gang.
The reality is, though, that the Flames, despite being pretty villainous and two-faced about all this — literally taking some of the money people were set to earn and likely counting on for reasons beyond their control is a bad thing — aren't going to take it as far as other teams likely will. As Eric Francis points out, layoffs weren't uncommon around the league in the last lockout, and won't be this time around either.
"It's not the best situation, but few, if any, will say it's unfair when it's unveiled," said King.
Yes, I'm sure that the people losing income they depend upon to live and maybe falling behind on things like their mortgages so that warhawk owners like Calgary's Murray Edwards (approximate net worth $2.2 billion U.S.) can get a break on Jarome Iginla's $7 million salary through a 24 percent rollback or whatever.
That's totally fair. Everyone will definitely see it that way.
--Ryan Lambert | Puck Daddy
