Which was exactly what the league and PA were addressing with this MOU.
Naturally 60% of salaries is a much more preferable number to the owners compared to 72%, the rough math of the actual cost savings for a cap team would be approximately $10M, less for any team not spending up to the cap. While that isn’t chump change by any stretch of the imagination it also seems like too big of a gap for the league’s negotiators to have been that far off in their original projections only a few months ago, that’s just my opinion though.
Regardless if that is the only material difference I still have a hard time believing this would be too big of a hardship for the league to endure. Team profits on average have increased each year under the previous CBA to the point where the average profit for every team in 2018 was $25M/season, with only 2 teams not making a profit. (
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4935474 )
That’s doesn’t even take into acount the extra almost $40M that teams made in expansion fees in the past few years.(which for anyone still trying to push the “partnership” narrative, wasn’t shared with the players at all)
You’re right it isn’t that simple. Ask yourself this question, if the league knows it is likely to lose money this season one way or another, do they still stand to gain something by saying they need this change even if they realistically could handle the additional losses? The answer is absolutely yes.
This league has a long history of claiming deals that are structured under their previous demanded framework are no longer viable, and in this case the league is essentially saying their negotiating team dropped the ball, have put the season in jeopardy and have damaged relations with the PA, yet they are using the same negotiating team to make these current projections and we are expected to take their word that everything will work out fine this time around. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I understand as fans we want to see hockey, but I think that desire can cloud our judgement at times when discussing the business side of the game. This last minute change to me really seems like a PR stunt to try and improve a deal for the owners by putting the players in a spot where they will look bad to the fans for not giving more to the league if they decide to not move forward with the season. Very similar to when the league tried to negotiate an extension by guaranteeing Olympic participation a few years back.