Post by wagner3 on Mar 23, 2006 17:32:01 GMT -5
all according to eklund from hockey buzz...the same guy who reported rumours Winnipeg has been trying to persuade the canes to move into mts centre...a long read...
edit: my mistake this should be in the "anything nhl" section.
THE NHLPA LEADERSHIP RESPONDS TO EMAILS 03/23/2006 @ 05:09 PM
I am sure that no one in the hockey media is covering the recent NHLPA stuff because it is not what people want to hear about...it isn`t nearly as exciting as the games we are watching...I am covering it because i am VERY concerned. I am concerned that if the current leadership is changed in any way, for anything other than actual serious wrong doings, it is very dangerous for our game... We could and likely would have another far worse lockout three years from now ...That WOULD be news in the hockey world.
In an email late last night Ted Saskin responded directly to the faction that has been challenging him since the new CBA was signed. The email was very pointed and I think did a good job at clarifying the issues...It will be interesting to see if the faction continues with their concerns or not.
To me the issue here is largely about this faction believing that Ted is working too closely with the NHL.
Much of this has to do with the drastic difference between Saskin and Goodenow. Goodenow`s focus was solely on getting the players of the NHLPA the most they could. And that WAS his job. And he did it very well if you look at the numbers...However, in my opinion, he didn`t look big picture. He was about getting as much money as he could for the players this instant. I compare it to over-fishing a lake to the point where you will get more fish today, but in a few years there will be no fish at all. We saw this attitude continually during the lockout. Bob bet the owners would cave and would be OK with losing money short term and would just bank on the fact that their franchises were becoming more valuable. However the owners realized that soon the franchise values would drop because they were losing money....so we lost a year and could have lost more...
Saskin has taken the opposite approach. His theory is that by working with the NHL the sport can grow (maybe) slower but at a more predictable long-tern rate....This way that our kid`s kids still have an NHL where they can possibly play and make money and we can watch them,,,,,He and Daly have a very solid relationship. Were it not for that relationship, and the work of Shanahan and Linden, we might still be talking about NHL and NHLPA meetings and if the lockout would soon be over...Most of the NHLPA agents that I talk to get the slow growth and working with the NHL concept...Most feel that this has more upside potential and is a needed stabilizing force after what occurred last year....
The latest email attacks on the NHLPA leadership got very ugly. as Ted says in the email below: "You suggest that these ancillary agreements constituted a set of private deals between me and Bill Daly.....I have included much of Ted`s email below because I feel it does not only a good job at defending the accusations and implications, but it also clarifies many of the misconceptions involving how the escrow works....Like I have always said, the fans deserve to not have something like this potentially kill there game unless there is specific proof of criminal actions....
Ted`s Letter was addressed to a specific person who had been sending out the latest emails...Ted`s email went out to all the agents (several of whom sent it to me "on the record.")...i have chosen to remove some specific names for legal purposes....
++++++++++++++++++
Ted`s Email to ***********:
"*****,"
Given that you have had copies of all of the ancillary agreements to the CBA for months, I was puzzled by the timing of your recent email inquiring with regard to one of them. You suggest that these ancillary agreements constituted a set of private deals between me and Bill Daly. To the contrary, all of them are agreements between the NHL and NHLPA and all were reviewed by our entire team, including the Executive Committee, Bob Goodenow, Ian Pulver, Ian Penny, other in-house staff, our outside legal counsel and our outside business consultants. Some of them were signed by me and some by Ian Pulver. The material provisions contained in the ancillary agreements were discussed with the Executive Board during the CBA ratification process. Finally, the entire Executive Committee.......have had their own copies of the ancillary agreements since July of 2005.
None of the ancillary agreements conflicts with the terms of the full CBA text, which everyone received. In fact, they benefit the Players by addressing areas of the CBA we wanted to clarify so that there could be no disagreement between the parties on certain issues. People familiar with labour law and practice know that there is nothing unusual or sinister about drafting side or ancillary agreements to a collective bargaining agreement. They are commonly used for purposes of safeguarding confidential data, for drafting purposes and for purposes of agreeing on certain details that are entirely consistent with the CBA provisions.
With regard to the specific agreement that addresses a possible escrow shortfall, which you raised in your email of March 15, 2006, your claimed “concerns” are unfounded. As you know, the CBA provides that the Players will receive no more and no less than 54% of HRR (more at higher HRR`s). Escrow is intended to ensure that the Players do not end up with more than 54%. The NHL`s solution was an in-season escrow rate that would assume every Club carried a payroll at the Upper Limit. This formulation would have yielded an in-season escrow rate of over 20% in `05-`06. This formulation would likely have met one of the NHL`s goals on this point, i.e. having sufficient escrow so that no one would have to chase guys after the last checks were in. The PA Negotiating Committee agreed with this goal-we did not want to see guys chased for money and we wanted any Overage to be the responsibility of the Players who received it. But our Negotiating Committee had an additional goal-since it would be virtually impossible for every Club to be at the Upper Limit, the NHL`s solution would likely take money away in-season for no good reason. Accordingly, the PA wanted to set the escrow at a level that took reality into account. The NHLPA Negotiating Team thought the Players would be better served by setting escrow in relation to the actual payrolls in place at the season`s start. The League indicated it would be inclined to agree so long as it felt comfortable that the fundamental 54% deal could be enforced. We later refined this area by including the idea of adjusting the rate as new information on Player salaries, injuries and performance bonuses became available. Once again, we wanted to adjust the rate in response to real experience. Accordingly, we proposed and the League agreed with the escrow formulation set out in Article 50. We believed that this method of adjusting the escrow to conform to actual experience would mean that the escrow would be of the appropriate size. Consistent with this approach, we were able this year to agree to adjust the rate in response to both actual payroll and actual HRR experience.
Everyone understands that an essential part of this CBA is that the Players will actually get no more and no less than 54% of HRR (higher as HRR increases). By adjusting the in-season rate to actual experience and keeping these goals in mind, the amount in escrow should certainly be sufficient to cover any Overage at year-end. I say this because we have four opportunities to align the in-season escrow with payroll spending and, if the revenues were significantly different than the projections (as occurred to the Players great benefit this year) we would be able to take that into account to adjust the in season escrow rate up or down. With the financial disclosure we receive on gate receipt reports every two weeks, broadcast and sponsorship agreements, individual team mid-season financial reports, etc., we are very comfortable tracking projected revenues so there are no significant surprises at the end of the year. In the extremely unlikely event that the escrow is not sufficient to fund an Overage, we needed a mechanism to comply with the 54% deal. In that case, you could either continue to fund the Overage from Players in the League Year in which the Overage occurs or from Players in the next year. We thought the proper way to fund would again be from the League Year in which any Overage could not be fully funded from escrow. In short, the ancillary agreement is consistent with the fundamental deal that the Players will not receive more or less than 54% of HRR and that the Players in any League Year with an Overage will in the first instance be responsible for funding it, in all likelihood through escrow.
Your email suggests you also continue to believe that the Executive Committee was not constitutionally empowered to make decisions on behalf of the Executive Board and membership in the CBA negotiations. As I would have thought you realized by now, there is no question that the Executive Board and NHLPA membership delegated full authority to the Executive Committee to negotiate the recent CBA. Bob Goodenow explained this to the membership at all team meetings over the last few years as well as in the large scale annual Player meetings attended by hundreds and hundreds of Players. The Executive Committee, not the Executive Board, was charged with negotiating a CBA to take back to the entire membership. The Executive Committee Members took their obligations to the Executive Board and full membership extremely seriously. All of your allegations try to suggest that the Executive Committee was trying to do something that was not in the best interests of the membership. Nothing could be further from the truth and I`m sure ***** could explain to you how Executive Committee members spent a great deal of time and effort considering what the best position on all issues would be for the entire membership. At no time did they put the interests of individual Executive Committee members ahead of any other union members. To suggest otherwise is extraordinarily insulting and disrespectful to all members of the Executive Committee who worked so hard in the recent round of negotiations.
I know you have attended .......meetings where we discussed the new CBA. I therefore continue to be mystified by your suggestion that I said this year`s escrow rate would be 1%-2%. You will recall that the escrow rate system was in fact presented by our outside counsel, John McCambridge, and he went to great lengths to explain that the in season escrow rate would not be possible to ascertain until we knew what commitment teams had made on their Player payrolls. Prior to the meetings there was much speculation in the press, often quoting agents and GM`s, that the escrow rate would be an automatic 15%. John reviewed a number of slides which showed different examples of payroll spending -- one where escrow could be about 15%, on at about 5.5% and another in which there could be no escrow. Neither John nor I specified that the in season escrow rate would be any particular number and the new CBA made it clear that there could be no basis for predicting that number until the Player payrolls were established. I did give my best “end-of-the-year” guess for the final escrow for `05-`06 saying I thought it would probably not exceed a “high single digit” this year because I believed that the revenue forecast of $1.8 Billion was very conservative. In fact, the revenue results for this year have exceeded everyone`s expectations, including my own, and the Players will do even better than a “high single digit” escrow.
Finally, I should note that I received your most recent email while I was in New York to attend a meeting with all 30 Club Presidents and NHL Executives. The focus of our meetings was to discuss working cooperatively on revenue-generating initiatives under our new CBA. Of course, many of the people attending the meeting became aware of your email since it was so widely distributed by you in another misguided effort to discredit myself and the NHLPA. Most people, including most Players and player agents, cannot understand why you would continue to pursue an approach that is so counterproductive and harmful to the welfare of the NHLPA members. At this point, your behaviour is distracting, divisive, unprofessional and damaging to the business. Our job is to maximize overall revenues, protect our Players and continue to make the game exciting for our fans. Your propaganda campaign only detracts from those goals.
It is with some regret that I conclude there is no point in having any further “dialogue” with you on these issues because it is clear you have no honest interest in any dialogue. I will respond to any bona-fide inquiry you have .......(regarding your business). I respectfully suggest that you focus on your duties .....instead of devoting so much of your time developing baseless conspiracy theories.
Ted Saskin
edit: my mistake this should be in the "anything nhl" section.
THE NHLPA LEADERSHIP RESPONDS TO EMAILS 03/23/2006 @ 05:09 PM
I am sure that no one in the hockey media is covering the recent NHLPA stuff because it is not what people want to hear about...it isn`t nearly as exciting as the games we are watching...I am covering it because i am VERY concerned. I am concerned that if the current leadership is changed in any way, for anything other than actual serious wrong doings, it is very dangerous for our game... We could and likely would have another far worse lockout three years from now ...That WOULD be news in the hockey world.
In an email late last night Ted Saskin responded directly to the faction that has been challenging him since the new CBA was signed. The email was very pointed and I think did a good job at clarifying the issues...It will be interesting to see if the faction continues with their concerns or not.
To me the issue here is largely about this faction believing that Ted is working too closely with the NHL.
Much of this has to do with the drastic difference between Saskin and Goodenow. Goodenow`s focus was solely on getting the players of the NHLPA the most they could. And that WAS his job. And he did it very well if you look at the numbers...However, in my opinion, he didn`t look big picture. He was about getting as much money as he could for the players this instant. I compare it to over-fishing a lake to the point where you will get more fish today, but in a few years there will be no fish at all. We saw this attitude continually during the lockout. Bob bet the owners would cave and would be OK with losing money short term and would just bank on the fact that their franchises were becoming more valuable. However the owners realized that soon the franchise values would drop because they were losing money....so we lost a year and could have lost more...
Saskin has taken the opposite approach. His theory is that by working with the NHL the sport can grow (maybe) slower but at a more predictable long-tern rate....This way that our kid`s kids still have an NHL where they can possibly play and make money and we can watch them,,,,,He and Daly have a very solid relationship. Were it not for that relationship, and the work of Shanahan and Linden, we might still be talking about NHL and NHLPA meetings and if the lockout would soon be over...Most of the NHLPA agents that I talk to get the slow growth and working with the NHL concept...Most feel that this has more upside potential and is a needed stabilizing force after what occurred last year....
The latest email attacks on the NHLPA leadership got very ugly. as Ted says in the email below: "You suggest that these ancillary agreements constituted a set of private deals between me and Bill Daly.....I have included much of Ted`s email below because I feel it does not only a good job at defending the accusations and implications, but it also clarifies many of the misconceptions involving how the escrow works....Like I have always said, the fans deserve to not have something like this potentially kill there game unless there is specific proof of criminal actions....
Ted`s Letter was addressed to a specific person who had been sending out the latest emails...Ted`s email went out to all the agents (several of whom sent it to me "on the record.")...i have chosen to remove some specific names for legal purposes....
++++++++++++++++++
Ted`s Email to ***********:
"*****,"
Given that you have had copies of all of the ancillary agreements to the CBA for months, I was puzzled by the timing of your recent email inquiring with regard to one of them. You suggest that these ancillary agreements constituted a set of private deals between me and Bill Daly. To the contrary, all of them are agreements between the NHL and NHLPA and all were reviewed by our entire team, including the Executive Committee, Bob Goodenow, Ian Pulver, Ian Penny, other in-house staff, our outside legal counsel and our outside business consultants. Some of them were signed by me and some by Ian Pulver. The material provisions contained in the ancillary agreements were discussed with the Executive Board during the CBA ratification process. Finally, the entire Executive Committee.......have had their own copies of the ancillary agreements since July of 2005.
None of the ancillary agreements conflicts with the terms of the full CBA text, which everyone received. In fact, they benefit the Players by addressing areas of the CBA we wanted to clarify so that there could be no disagreement between the parties on certain issues. People familiar with labour law and practice know that there is nothing unusual or sinister about drafting side or ancillary agreements to a collective bargaining agreement. They are commonly used for purposes of safeguarding confidential data, for drafting purposes and for purposes of agreeing on certain details that are entirely consistent with the CBA provisions.
With regard to the specific agreement that addresses a possible escrow shortfall, which you raised in your email of March 15, 2006, your claimed “concerns” are unfounded. As you know, the CBA provides that the Players will receive no more and no less than 54% of HRR (more at higher HRR`s). Escrow is intended to ensure that the Players do not end up with more than 54%. The NHL`s solution was an in-season escrow rate that would assume every Club carried a payroll at the Upper Limit. This formulation would have yielded an in-season escrow rate of over 20% in `05-`06. This formulation would likely have met one of the NHL`s goals on this point, i.e. having sufficient escrow so that no one would have to chase guys after the last checks were in. The PA Negotiating Committee agreed with this goal-we did not want to see guys chased for money and we wanted any Overage to be the responsibility of the Players who received it. But our Negotiating Committee had an additional goal-since it would be virtually impossible for every Club to be at the Upper Limit, the NHL`s solution would likely take money away in-season for no good reason. Accordingly, the PA wanted to set the escrow at a level that took reality into account. The NHLPA Negotiating Team thought the Players would be better served by setting escrow in relation to the actual payrolls in place at the season`s start. The League indicated it would be inclined to agree so long as it felt comfortable that the fundamental 54% deal could be enforced. We later refined this area by including the idea of adjusting the rate as new information on Player salaries, injuries and performance bonuses became available. Once again, we wanted to adjust the rate in response to real experience. Accordingly, we proposed and the League agreed with the escrow formulation set out in Article 50. We believed that this method of adjusting the escrow to conform to actual experience would mean that the escrow would be of the appropriate size. Consistent with this approach, we were able this year to agree to adjust the rate in response to both actual payroll and actual HRR experience.
Everyone understands that an essential part of this CBA is that the Players will actually get no more and no less than 54% of HRR (higher as HRR increases). By adjusting the in-season rate to actual experience and keeping these goals in mind, the amount in escrow should certainly be sufficient to cover any Overage at year-end. I say this because we have four opportunities to align the in-season escrow with payroll spending and, if the revenues were significantly different than the projections (as occurred to the Players great benefit this year) we would be able to take that into account to adjust the in season escrow rate up or down. With the financial disclosure we receive on gate receipt reports every two weeks, broadcast and sponsorship agreements, individual team mid-season financial reports, etc., we are very comfortable tracking projected revenues so there are no significant surprises at the end of the year. In the extremely unlikely event that the escrow is not sufficient to fund an Overage, we needed a mechanism to comply with the 54% deal. In that case, you could either continue to fund the Overage from Players in the League Year in which the Overage occurs or from Players in the next year. We thought the proper way to fund would again be from the League Year in which any Overage could not be fully funded from escrow. In short, the ancillary agreement is consistent with the fundamental deal that the Players will not receive more or less than 54% of HRR and that the Players in any League Year with an Overage will in the first instance be responsible for funding it, in all likelihood through escrow.
Your email suggests you also continue to believe that the Executive Committee was not constitutionally empowered to make decisions on behalf of the Executive Board and membership in the CBA negotiations. As I would have thought you realized by now, there is no question that the Executive Board and NHLPA membership delegated full authority to the Executive Committee to negotiate the recent CBA. Bob Goodenow explained this to the membership at all team meetings over the last few years as well as in the large scale annual Player meetings attended by hundreds and hundreds of Players. The Executive Committee, not the Executive Board, was charged with negotiating a CBA to take back to the entire membership. The Executive Committee Members took their obligations to the Executive Board and full membership extremely seriously. All of your allegations try to suggest that the Executive Committee was trying to do something that was not in the best interests of the membership. Nothing could be further from the truth and I`m sure ***** could explain to you how Executive Committee members spent a great deal of time and effort considering what the best position on all issues would be for the entire membership. At no time did they put the interests of individual Executive Committee members ahead of any other union members. To suggest otherwise is extraordinarily insulting and disrespectful to all members of the Executive Committee who worked so hard in the recent round of negotiations.
I know you have attended .......meetings where we discussed the new CBA. I therefore continue to be mystified by your suggestion that I said this year`s escrow rate would be 1%-2%. You will recall that the escrow rate system was in fact presented by our outside counsel, John McCambridge, and he went to great lengths to explain that the in season escrow rate would not be possible to ascertain until we knew what commitment teams had made on their Player payrolls. Prior to the meetings there was much speculation in the press, often quoting agents and GM`s, that the escrow rate would be an automatic 15%. John reviewed a number of slides which showed different examples of payroll spending -- one where escrow could be about 15%, on at about 5.5% and another in which there could be no escrow. Neither John nor I specified that the in season escrow rate would be any particular number and the new CBA made it clear that there could be no basis for predicting that number until the Player payrolls were established. I did give my best “end-of-the-year” guess for the final escrow for `05-`06 saying I thought it would probably not exceed a “high single digit” this year because I believed that the revenue forecast of $1.8 Billion was very conservative. In fact, the revenue results for this year have exceeded everyone`s expectations, including my own, and the Players will do even better than a “high single digit” escrow.
Finally, I should note that I received your most recent email while I was in New York to attend a meeting with all 30 Club Presidents and NHL Executives. The focus of our meetings was to discuss working cooperatively on revenue-generating initiatives under our new CBA. Of course, many of the people attending the meeting became aware of your email since it was so widely distributed by you in another misguided effort to discredit myself and the NHLPA. Most people, including most Players and player agents, cannot understand why you would continue to pursue an approach that is so counterproductive and harmful to the welfare of the NHLPA members. At this point, your behaviour is distracting, divisive, unprofessional and damaging to the business. Our job is to maximize overall revenues, protect our Players and continue to make the game exciting for our fans. Your propaganda campaign only detracts from those goals.
It is with some regret that I conclude there is no point in having any further “dialogue” with you on these issues because it is clear you have no honest interest in any dialogue. I will respond to any bona-fide inquiry you have .......(regarding your business). I respectfully suggest that you focus on your duties .....instead of devoting so much of your time developing baseless conspiracy theories.
Ted Saskin
