FOR the second time since the lockout began on Sept. 16, an NHL owner has unwittingly revealed his league’s agenda. First, it was Atlanta’s Steve Belkin talking out of turn about the plan to use scab players in 2005-06. Now, it’s Boston’s Jeremy Jacobs all but confirming the intention to reopen at some future point with a new cast of players after breaking the union.
One pig after another at the trough.
In an interview Thursday with the Boston Globe far more transparent than the militant owner could have intended, Jacobs talked about the executive board of union players as, “a group of guys, who, if we wait until next year, they probably won’t be the guys who eventually will be playing.
“This is a wasting asset in their case. [When the lockout ends], we’ll have a different group of fans and maybe we’ll have a whole different group of players.”
If Jacobs is an expert on anything in hockey, it’s on a wasting asset. The Bruins, once one of the great brand names in all of pro sports and not so very long ago more popular in New England than the Sawx, Patriots and Celtics, have not won the Stanley Cup in the 29 years Jacobs has owned the team. Since 1993, 13 of the 15 teams in the East have gone to the conference finals; every team, that is, except the five-year-old Thrashers and Jacobs’ Bruins.
But this is no surprise. Jacobs is the owner who forced Raymond Bourque out of town. He is the owner who has always prioritized stuffing his pockets above winning championships. He as much admitted it to the Globe a couple of days ago.
“When you’re in a business that values success based on how you finish in the standings or have a Stanley Cup, it’s not for economic success, and yet we have to control the economics of this business,” said the Buffalo-based, absentee owner with a net worth estimated by Forbes at close to $1 billion. “If we continue to just leave it on the basis of the guy who wins the most amount of games is successful, irrespective of how they financially win or lose, then that’s going to be a different discipline and a different set of circumstances.”
The Bruins have made a profit of close to $45M over the last five years. They have the eighth-highest revenue in the NHL. None of that is enough for Jacobs, who is behind the wheel of Gary Bettman’s union-busting bus. None of that is enough for any of these owners, pigs at the trough who will not reopen their precious league until they have dragged it through the mud, day after day after day.
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Let me ask you this. Seriously. Would you ever consider signing a contract with a company that gave your employer total control of your income for up to 12 years, with no ability of your own to negotiate a raise? Would you ever agree to a deal that would allow your employer to bar you from earning a living in your field in North America if you didn’t accept his or her offer? Who in his or her right mind would?
Yet that’s the offer on the table from NHL owners. We’ve got news for them. This is America, not some banana republic. This is America, where labor has a choice. This is America, where such a union-busting offer is nothing less than un-American.
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You’re Ottawa’s 21-year-old Jason Spezza and under the NHL proposal your pay’s been cut to $960,500. For the next nine years, you have no way to make a nickel more than that. You’re Jason Spezza, and when you become a free agent in July, you’re going to sign a long-term contract in Europe worth far more than that. You’re Jason Spezza, and you’re going to be just one of dozens of the NHL’s brightest young talents to flee the NHL.
Alexander Ovechkin, first overall last year? Evgeni Malkin, second overall? Fedor Tyutin? Jarkko Immonen, the impressive kid the Rangers got from Toronto in the Brian Leetch deal? Henrik Lundqvist, the big-time Ranger goaltending prospect in the Swedish Elite League? Lauri Korpikoski, the highly-regarded winger the Blueshirts selected 19th overall in June? They’re not coming over, none of them, they’re never coming over from Europe to play in the NHL, not when they’re going to be capped, not when they’re going to be able to earn far more money at home than they could make here in Jacobs’ NHL.
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Finally, this just in. Slap Shots has learned that Bettman and O.J. Simpson are joining forces. Bettman will help Simpson look for the real killer while O.J. helps the commissioner look for the league source who leaked the memo that ridiculed the PA 24-Percent Solution.