NHLPA Not Promising Salary Relief

These are worrisome times financially for the NHL, and it has nothing to do with Y2K. It has everything to do with Y2004.

As player salaries surpassed team revenues last year, commissioner Gary Bettman cautioned teams to watch their spending. They haven’t. This season’s average salary is $1.3 million, and five teams have payrolls exceeding $40 million.

How out of whack are salaries? Consider this: Forbes magazine’s survey of franchise values estimates the Edmonton Oilers are worth $67 million, or only about $8 million less than the New York Rangers’ payroll.

Forbes estimates 11 NHL teams are worth $105 million or less, or what the Los Angeles Dodgers are paying pitcher Kevin Brown. (And many of those teams don’t have chartered airfare like Brown gets 12 times a year.) Among those 11: the Los Angeles Kings, a Stanley Cup contender that plays in a new arena, the Staples Center.

Clearly, something is wrong, but don’t look for the NHL Players Association to offer any relief until its collective bargaining agreement with club owners expires in 2004.

NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow has no plans to reopen the collective bargaining agreement. And if his union doesn’t budge, the agreement stays in place, and owners won’t get the salary cap that some say is necessary to bring sanity to salaries.

“The idea of players to accept a salary cap is really a notion for them to accept less than they might otherwise have been paid,� Goodenow told the Toronto Sun.

Goodenow said players are getting only their fare share of increased revenues from expansion fees ($15 million for each team), the NHL’s new $600 million TV contract with ABC and ESPN and luxury seating in new arenas. By next year, only seven NHL teams will play in arenas more than 10 years old.

The NHLPA has helped spike player salaries by displaying them on its Web site, a tactic that even the Major League Baseball Players Association doesn’t employ. That means that every club, player and interested fan knows how much each player is making. That, in turn, puts the pressure on player agents to negotiate fair-market value contracts.

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THE NEXT ONE?: Remember this name: Jason Spezza.

Spezza, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound forward for the Mississauga Ice Dogs of the Ontario Hockey League, is the first 16-year-old since Eric Lindros to be invited to play for Canada’s junior national team.

The honor previously was reserved for the super elite, such as Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Lindros.

Spezza had 71 points last year as a 15-year-old rookie with the Brampton Battalion and became the youngest player selected to play in the OHL all-star game.

“A person like him comes along every 10 or 15 years,� Mississauga coach Jim Hulton said.

Spezza was too young to have watched Gretzky play during his Edmonton Oilers days. But when Canadian stations replayed some of Gretzky’s games following his retirement, Spezza taped them, studied Gretzky’s moves and tried duplicating them in practice.

Spezza already has a nickname, too: The Next One.

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MEETINGS, MEETINGS EVERYWHERE: The NHL Board of Governors meets in a few days, but that didn’t prevent the Philadelphia Flyers and Dallas Stars from getting a jump by holding meetings of their own.

Watching their season slip away, the Stanley Cup champion Stars met to address their sub-.500 start. Each player could voice his concerns and make suggestions.

“It started pretty innocently and then turned into something big,� center Guy Carbonneau said.

Something must have helped: The Stars immediately went on their first three-game winning streak of the season, helped in part by Carbonneau’s assist on Brett Hull’s tying goal in a 3-2 victory in Montreal. It was probably the last game in Montreal for Carbonneau, a former Canadiens captain, and he asked his teammates beforehand to win it for him.

The Flyers, who have been winning, called a meeting to play down trade rumors involving star Eric Lindros.

General manager Bobby Clarke, who has had a tenuous relationship with Lindros, met first with coach Roger Neilson and chairman Ed Snider, then with Lindros, then with the rest of the team. The meetings came amid speculation the Flyers might trade Lindros to Carolina for holdout Keith Primeau.

Neilson said the trade rumors took on a life of their own.

“It seems like everything gets jumped on pretty quick around here,� he told the Philadelphia Daily News. “It was like when I was supposedly getting fired two weeks into the season. I’ve never seen anything like that. It was just crazy. Nuts.�

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IS IT BOARD, OR BORED? Speaking of the Board of Governors, there are no major items on their agenda Monday and Tuesday in suburban Miami. But they will get a report on NHL participation in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The International Ice Hockey Federation wants a yea or nay from the NHL and the NHLPA by the end of the month. Both commissioner Gary Bettman and union chief Bob Goodenow want the NHL involved, but only if the league isn’t forced to shut down for nearly two weeks, as it did during last year’s Olympics in Nagano.

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THE NATIONAL GAME: How popular is hockey in the Great White North? According to a survey of 3,000 Canadians by the Angus Reid Group, 55 percent follow hockey closely or somewhat closely. That’s a higher percentage than Americans follow the NFL.