Wednesday, November 28, 2012
The Good Old Hockey Game
Student ID#: 10081137
Coms 369-L02
There
are many stereotypes that come with being a Canadian. Some of those stereotypes include saying
“eh”, drinking beer and obsessing about hockey.
Although I do not particularly say “eh”, I do love drinking beer and
watching the good old hockey game. Hockey
is a great experience all around. It is
fun to play (although I am not very good at it) and it is such a great bonding
experience. When I was young, hockey was
huge in my family. I remember we would
all gather into the living room on cold winter nights, with hot chocolate in
our hands, and watch the game. It was
the one time when we all stopped our busy lives and came together as a family. I loved cheering together and I loved the joy
I felt celebrating when our team won. Now
that I have grown older I still enjoy hockey, but now I get together with
friends and head down to our local pub to watch the game. With cold beer in my hands instead of hot
chocolate, I still feel the sense of community I felt when I was young. This year however, I will not be able to watch
the game I love because of the National Hockey League (NHL) lockout. I think that the lockout is absolutely
ridiculous. The lockout is between the
National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) who represent the players
and the NHL who represent the owners.
This
is not the first time a league or more specifically the NHL has experienced a
lockout. For the NHL this is the fourth
time experiencing a strike or lockout in twenty years. The lockout currently being experienced deals
with a labor dispute between the players and the owners. The labor dispute deals with the termination
of the collective bargaining agreement.
A collective bargaining agreement is a series of negotiations dealing
with workplace conditions. In this case,
the players and the owners are negotiating over conditions such as how the
revenue of the NHL should be split, trade agreements and other workplace
conditions such as training, health and safety.
The players and owners have a specific amount of time to reach a
collective bargaining agreement that is renegotiated every 5-10 years. If the new collective bargaining agreement is
not reached by the specific deadline the commissioner of the NHL, and
representative of the owners will “lock the players out”.
Once
the players are locked out, there are no paychecks, the players are not allowed
to use team facilities and there is no season until a collective bargaining
agreement is reached. Besides the
players losing money, the NHL and the owners are also affected. Gary Bettman (current NHL commissioner)
stated, “the business is probably losing between $18 and $20
million a day and the players are losing between $8 and $10 million a day”. The
major issue that is going on right now is that the owner’s want to reduce the
players’ share of Hockey Related Revenue (HRR) from 57 percent to 46
percent. I understand that no one likes
having their paycheck reduced and that the owners should not be initiating this
change in earnings. Even though that is
quite a large percentage drop, the players and the owners will still both be
making a lot more money than the average person. The
average salary in the NHL last season was $2.45 million and some of the top
players made around $9.38 million. In the 2011 fiscal year, NHL commissioner
Gary Bettman was paid $7.98 million. As
you can see, neither side is hard done by for money.
Although
the players and the owners are affected by the lockout it does not mean they
are going broke by any means. Since the
players are not receiving paychecks they are finding alternative means of
income. Many of the NHL players have
traveled over seas to play in hockey leagues situated in Europe. Playing in these separate leagues insures
that the players have an alternate means of income during the lockout. This means that the only people who are being
greatly affected by the lockout are the fans.
How can these millionaires sit there and argue over money when both
sides have more than enough to spare? I do not see us, the fans, complaining about all the money
we spend to watch them play. Individual
ticket prices to watch a hockey game vary from $35 to $114. Season ticket prices start at $440 and can go
as high as $11,000 depending on the team, seats and section. After spending money to go see the games, you can
also factor in the food and drink prices at the stadium (which are far from
cheap). In the end, us fans are spending
serious amounts of money to watch the sport that we love; yet we are not going
on strike for lower venue prices.
Hockey
players, when the NHL first started, used to be all about the fans and the love
of playing the sport. It was an honor
just to be selected to play in a professional league in front of adoring fans
instead of working a regular full time job.
Now, it seems all the players’ care about is the money. No longer do they want to be a little boys or
girls idol, or make a difference in the community by giving citizens a release
from their everyday stresses. Being a hockey
player should be all about playing the sport that you love and having kids
playing on the outdoor rink wearing your jersey, imagining they are a professional
hockey player too. The fans should
support the players and the players should support the fans.
This
will be the third lockout under Gary Bettmans control. That is the most lockouts that have ever
occurred under one commissioner in any sport, not just in the NHL. What Gary Bettman is doing is obviously not
working. The owners need to find a new
way to work with the players in order to avoid future lockouts from
happening. The owners are making more
than enough money and in some cases more than the players. The
NHL saw its fifth consecutive year of record revenue, with a projection of more
than $2.9 billion by the end of the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoffs. So why are they
still fighting over money? Both sides
need to stop being so greedy and remember what the NHL is really about. The
owners and players need to realize that without the fans, they have no money. Without the fans, they have no job. Without the fans, they have no
livelihood. I think it is time they
stopped caring so much about the money and remember what the sport is all
about. It is about sportsmanship, unity and
the true love of the game.
For more information visit:
CBC Sports. (September 19, 2012). 5
questions answered on the nhl lockout. Retrieved from
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/story/2012/09/18/sp-nhl-lockout-five-questions-answered.html
Fortier, A. (August 24, 2010). Nhl
ticket prices. Retrieved from http://viewfrommyseats.com/2010/08/nhl-ticket-prices/
Hall, J. (September 14, 2012). Nhl
lockout: Bettman biographer describes the man the fans love to hate.
Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/article/1256710--nhl-lockout-bettman-biographer-describes-the-man-the-fans-love-to-hate
NHL.com. (April 13, 2011). Best-ever
business year highlighted by record revenue. Retrieved from
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=559630
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