The NHL announced on Friday the cancellation of the Winter
Classic. As the Classic goes, so goes
the season. Go ahead and make other
plans, get your ticket refunds, trade in your Caps merchandise for Wizards,
because there is not going to be a hockey season.
This may seem like an overreaction, but I’ve said all along
that if the Classic were to be cancelled, the season would not be far behind.
The NHL has lost its biggest event of the season. According to ESPN, the Classic had 3.5
million viewers last year. Every game of
the Stanley Cup finals averaged about 3 million viewers. The Classis is the signature event, the one day
every year when hockey is relevant. And
now, it’s gone.
Yes, it is only the beginning of November. There is plenty of time to save the season,
but it does not matter. Even if the NHL and NHLPA came to an agreement
tomorrow, the Classic could not be brought back. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly told reporters
as much.
Rumors of the cancellation had been circulating for over a
week. The reason why the NHL waited
until Friday was because when the announcement was made, it was final. The event takes months of planning and
preparing. An outdoor rink does not just
appear over night and an event of this magnitude take time to pull off.
With the Classic gone, both sides will struggle to come to
an equitable deal. The players have lost
all of their leverage. The only thing
they really had to threaten the owners with was the Classic.
The lockout began with each side feeling out the other. How long would the league be willing to let
this drag out? Perhaps if the players
could hold out until they could threaten the league’s cash cow, the owners
would be willing to offer a better deal.
Now the NHL has lost its biggest,
most profitable, most important event of the year. The players have overplayed their hand, and
the league is going to make them pay for it.
Two weeks ago, the NHL offered the players a 50/50
deal. The NHLPA responded with three
counter proposals that gave them more than what the NHL was offering and the
NHL quickly rejected those proposals.
Why would the NHL now give the players a better deal? The owners would never have locked the
players out if the regular season were that important to them. They will risk this season to get the upper
hand in the negotiations.
The owners have come to a point where they can force a
better deal for themselves on the players.
Before, the goal for the NHL was to come to an equitable agreement in
order to save the Classic and the regular season. Now, the goal is to get the best deal they
can possibly force from the players.
Think about it this way, in a hostage negotiation, what
happens when there are no more hostages to exchange? That’s when the SWAT team goes in. The players have nothing left to negotiate
with.
The NHLPA turned their noses at the NHL’s proposal two weeks
ago. They will not simply cave in now,
but they also cannot hold out as long as the owners can. The longer this drags out, the more desperate
they will become. When this is over, the
players will look back at the NHL’s last proposal and wish they had accepted it
because the offers are only going to get worse from here on out.
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