No Fehr

YES!!!  You see what I did there?!  Fehr, not fear, get it?!  Oh I’m sure you don’t, it’s just that clever….I don’t want to do a lot of pieces on the lockout.  I’m sick and livid about the situation.  It’s well beyond absurd with what’s going on.  And it bothers me a lot that TSN and Sportsnet give it so much attention, giving both sides the impression that anyone cares.  I care a bit, otherwise I would go on not saying a word about it.  But I don’t care very much, I just feel like I needed to point some things out.  One of which is that the players brought this on themselves.

I understand why fans are for the most part siding with the players here.  In 04/05 the owners said they needed to get their linkage and when they had their system things would be right.  And yet here we are.  So I get it, and part of me feels the same way.  But the players can’t hire Don Fehr and then cry about not having a deal done.

If they wanted to actually DEAL with Gary Bettman, then they would have brought in a guy who can get deals done.  That’s not Fehr!  Fehr is just like Bettman!  Fehr’s whole negotiating style is just like Bettman and that is to be petty, and ask for everything, and refuse to budge, and try to break the owners.  And it won’t work.  Oh and while I’m on what will and won’t work, the players rocking suits at one press conference and then rocking hats, t-shirts and shorts won’t make fans go “oh see, they’re just like you and me” either.

If the players had been smart here, they would have brought in a guy who will go to the table, and actually look to negotiate.  And it’s pretty simple to most people what needs to be done here.  The players need to give the owners a little bit of coin back here.  Not much, but some.  And they need to eventually give them 50% revenue.  If they did those 2 things, the owners would be ready to deal and THEN the players could start winning other battles.

Like they want their own hotel rooms on the road after a certain amount of games.  Once you make the revenues more owner friendly, THEN you can start getting things like that.  But if we have learned anything from the NFL and NBA lockouts, when the owners have 1 thing they’re adamant on getting, they get it.  So give them the reduction they want and go from there, you will make the money back rather than just lose more and more and more by sitting out and eventually losing it anyways.

Something else that nobody is pointing out here is that the owners know how difficult Fehr was to deal with for MLB owners.  Don’t kid yourself, the NHL owners want this guy out.  They’re looking to make this guy resign once this mess is over so they never have to put up with him again.  I can’t help but feel that a big part of this for the owners is bitterness over them bringing in a guy who would be difficult to deal with rather than a guy who would work well with the league.  The PA by bringing in Don Fehr essentially said “we don’t want to work with you guys, we want to **** you guys the way you ****** us!”  And here we are.

In the end both sides are being simply ridiculous.  But the players have to own some of this, they have to quit crying about how the owners locked them out.  I roll my eyes when Fehr says “we were willing to work on things without a lockout”.  No you weren’t Don, you did that dirty trick to the MLB owners in 94 and then went on strike causing the cancellation of the World Series.  He’s like that used car salesman who screws over a bunch of people and then can’t figure out why nobody wants to deal with him after.  And the players actually thought this would be the solution to their problems.  Maybe he will be, but it sure doesn’t look that way.

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