Quote:
Originally Posted by Beatle17
Any CBA negotiation with Donald Fehr on one side will ensure a lockout. After he lied to baseball and the players walked before the playoffs made sure that no ownership group will ever trust him again.
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Don Fehr is problematic in that he has a pathological hatred of owners, and is perfectly willing to sacrifice as much of his players' careers as necessary to take them down - if they let him. However, the 1994 strike was far more the fault of MLB owners than it was the union. Notably, one of their efforts to pressure the players into accepting a salary cap was to just stop paying into the pension plan mid-season. It backfired. Spectacularly. Both sides had agreed to play without a CBA and operate under the status quo. It was the owners who broke that arrangement first. And after the strike hit, the owners tried to impose a CBA. That, obviously, got crushed by the courts.
The problem I have with Don Fehr is that in 2002, he was set to do again what he did in 94 - cancel the World Series - over far lower stakes. Fortunately for baseball, the players themselves basically revolted and overturned their previous vote to allow a strike action.
And that, knowing Don Fehr, is what it will take to prevent a lockout in the NHL: The players need to tell Don Fehr to make a deal before the current CBA expires. They *should* be able to do it, given the only real sticking point is escrow, and that's easily solved by shifting the salary cap.