Sadfaced millionaires and sadfaced billionaires are fighting it out right now about how to divide the outrageous plunder made in the National Hockey League.
Boo-Frickety-Hoo!
The players in the NHL are overpaid. Chasing a rubber disk around a rink should not be multi-millionaire territory. I’m thinking important occupations that improve our society should get the big bucks, you know like doctors, scientists,engineers, educators, social workers et cetera; occupations that make a difference.
My solution to the NHL vs. NHLPA problem?
1. No one makes over a million dollars. Too bad so sad, you’re lucky to be paid for playing a game.
2. Profits from advertising/ticket sales/ concessions are capped at 15%.
3.The excess money goes back into developing the game at the grassroots and making it safer for all those involved. From midget leagues on up, kids would have the best equipment and facilities to practice the great game of hockey. Medical care for injured players and further medical research into common injuries would be fully funded in order to make the game safer and generally make the game better for all those involved.
4. A retirement pension fund would also be established to help players retire/transition to other roles in society.
5. Ticket prices would be reduced to make the game accessible to more people, while keeping the funding structure in place to support points 3 and 4.
The inflated greed that ruins the NHL makes it unwatchable. Wow! overpaid douche one just scored on overpaid douche two, oh the drama of it all.
Bringing hockey back to a reasonable level would be awesome, I’d watch hockey again because then truly it would be Canada’s national sport (kinda like Lacrosse which actually is Canada’s national sport).
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
7 comments
August 22, 2012 at 2:26 pm
bleatmop
I agree with sentiment of this post, although I have one caveat. I fully support the rights of the players to bargain collectively. If they actually are creating a product worth the amount of money the owners are raking in, then they have the right to bargain to get their fair share of that money. That the owners have earned this money by making the game unaffordable for anyone but the well off to go to a game is a disgrace. $80 nosebleed tickets and televising the majority of the games of premium channels and the good games on PPV has turned me off of hockey for the past 4 years or so.
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August 22, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Rob F
Switch to women’s ice hockey. When the teams are reasonably close to each other in ability it’s way better, anyway.
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August 23, 2012 at 11:15 am
The Arbourist
@bleatmop
I think I understand what you’re saying and on this level I agree with you.
The level where my disgust over the manifests itself is the idea that the creation of this particular product has spun crazily off the rails when compared to the rest of the occupations in society. It isn’t right and become less and less right as more money has come up for grabs.
I’m also leery of using “the market” as any sort of arbiter of what is good in society. It smacks of argumentum ad populum and can be conflated with the right-wing trope of free-markets = freedom, which of course is complete bullshite.
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August 23, 2012 at 11:19 am
The Arbourist
Sounds like a good idea Rob! I just hope they have the fortitude not sell out so they can be more like the NHL..*ack*
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August 24, 2012 at 12:52 pm
The Intransigent One
Don’t worry, women’s hockey will never sell out because The Market will never buy it. The Market, after all, is composed entirely of heterosexual males who are only interested in watching women’s sports for the T&A*, which is why you get women televised in tennis and beach volleyball and basically nothing else except during the olympics. Women’s hockey isn’t going to bring in big TV dollars unless it goes the Lingerie Football route. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingerie_Football_League
That said, RobF makes a good point and we should check out our local university team’s schedule. I bet those are games we could afford to actually go to.
*kidding, but kindof serious too?
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August 25, 2012 at 12:10 am
bleatmop
Arb – I’m not in favour of letting the markets decide what is good in society either. However, we do live in a society that disproportionally allocates it resources to being entertained first, then all that social good stuff later. That’s why actors and athletes can make millions while nurses and teachers make thousands. Being in that society, I support the athletes rights to get what they can get, because it’s really the big business that gets the most money. CEOs make in their first week what the highest paid athletes get paid in a year.
Ideally, I would like an egalitarian society, where we all make a living wage and resources are allocated to advance and maintain all of humanity first. Unfortunately this isn’t it.
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August 25, 2012 at 8:18 am
The Arbourist
@bleatmop
Doesn’t mean its right. :) Hence the rant.
It is the idea that money = quality. When you look at it, it just doesn’t wash. Like every profession and career the people who excel are usually the ones that love what they do. The rest of the stuff, including the wage, is just gravy for them. We need more people doing the things that they love to improve what is going on in society (holy shite, the hippy dippy is strong with me today). Providing those opportunities should be priority.
Like I’ve said before, politicians should make no more than teachers and the professions and careers that actively benefit society should be boosted up, based not on the market, but rather on the value to society.
Heck, if it meant giving up 30% of my income or more, so that the people around me are not in poverty I would be completely for it. Basic needs met = Security for me and my family.
I digress.
Bleat, I am kinda with on that with the NHLPA, but to me it kinda feels like the electoral choices they have in the US – a vote for either is a vote for elite interests like siding with one batch of millionaires against another, its kinda nihilistic.
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