Selena Roberts: Hockey Fans Are Silent

SPORTS OF THE TIMES
Hockey Fans Are Silent, and Union Is Listening
By SELENA ROBERTS
Published: December 12, 2004

During his savvy strategy of passivity, Commissioner Gary Bettman could let public apathy do the devil's work for him as the National Hockey League spiraled silently toward its third month of a lockout.

He didn't have to belittle his league, not when a poll in The Hockey News revealed that only 56 percent of Americans even knew the N.H.L. had faded to black. He didn't have to rail about the gluttony of players, not when the lunch-pail fan base already blamed the catered-to stars.

Bettman could preserve his voice of doom when others were speaking volumes. As the Coyotes' Brett Hull recently told The Arizona Republic, "I think there's no question that the fans are going to lose interest because the game that's not being played right now wasn't that exciting to begin with." As an editorial in The Globe and Mail of Toronto on Nov. 6 explained: "By locking down major league hockey nearly a month ago, you've shown us something. We can live without it."

For weeks, this public indifference was Bettman's leverage, with fan silence as his support system. How could the union protect the box-office salaries of its stars when the box office didn't have a line of fans panting to get in? How could the union justify A-list money to a Ranger like Bobby Holik if his celebrity couldn't swing him a table at Nobu?

The union boss Bob Goodenow had to do something to undermine Bettman's ability to parlay the N.H.L.'s irrelevance into a negotiating tool. On Thursday, Goodenow stirred up the suffocating dead air by unveiling an offer that rippled with shock value.

Salary rollbacks, Goodenow proclaimed. To his credit, it was a monster concession from the union, perking up jaded followers who had wondered if the union possessed an ounce of economic or social awareness.

Suddenly, Goodenow had placed players in the same sort of sacrificial roles as the union pilots across the United States who had absorbed pay cuts to keep airlines flying. And he had turned players into sympathetic symbols instead of examples of excess by putting 24 percent of each goon, rookie and journeyman's salary into the pockets of beleaguered owners.

"Let me be clear on this," Goodenow said. "This is no grandstanding ploy. This is no P.R. move."
This denial was glorious, one dripping with grandstanding moves and this simple P.R. ploy: rouse the dormant fan base while putting the pressure on Bettman to counter with a good-faith proposal when bargaining resumes Tuesday.

It's a smooth move by Goodenow on the surface because his celebrated plan begs for attention but does not address the one systemic issue Bettman covets most: cost certainty, as in a potential salary cap.

Goodenow's calculated offer preys on the quick-fix addictions of undisciplined owners who, with a little extra money in their wallets, will only toss it into a wishing well of roster stars.
The union's blueprint for a resolution does nothing to eliminate payroll disparity between the league's big spenders and its coupon clippers. Goodenow has proposed a luxury tax, but it is certain to be ignored by icon collectors like the yachtsman and Rangers overseer James L. Dolan, providing an uneven playing field when a romantic small-market team like Calgary tries to re-sign its beloved Jarome Iginla.

The union did not move toward Bettman's cost-certainty-or-bust mandate, but Goodenow did move in the right direction by recognizing, if begrudgingly, the fragile financial state of a niche league. With a third of the season vanished, the union finally acknowledged the league's dire fiscal reports, ledgers it once bashed as fuzzy math.

Why the wait for a revelation? Perhaps the union leadership didn't count on the protracted public apathy toward the N.H.L. in the United States and especially in, of all places, Canada, where baby booties have skate blades.

It seems Canadians are a lot like the Whos of Whoville: After the N.H.L. leaders slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant, and took every Modano, Sakic and Wade Redden, Canadians gathered around the ice rinks, the big and the small, and watched junior league hockey without commercialism at all.

"What's not to like?" The Globe and Mail said to its readers. "Some might call it reconnecting with the simple pleasures. Some might call it a return to reality. It turns out that reality is not such a bad place. Even on a Saturday night."

This contentment with the true meaning of hockey has been working against the union because it validated the owners' argument that player salaries are out of line and out of touch with the league's reality.

The public wasn't arguing. For months, this was Bettman's leverage. Unlike N.B.A.

Commissioner David Stern, who will probably use the league's Ron Artest image issues against the union during its collective bargaining, Bettman hasn't had to sully his league to court public opinion.

Who was in Goodenow's corner? The baseball union god Donald Fehr - one of the more polarizing leaders in sports. With the lockout dragging, Goodenow had no time for a hard-line Fehrism. He needed to reach out to the owners and, just as important, to the N.H.L.'s alienated loyalists.
He responded with a salary-slashing deal that ignored the core issues but provided a moment that hard-working fans could embrace and that even Bettman could appreciate.

"The magnitude of the rollback is what you need to get our economics back in line as a starting point," Bettman said. "To me, it's an acknowledgment of our economics."

For Goodenow, it was an acknowledgment of the quiet reality that public indifference had become Bettman's ally.

E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com