Quote:
Originally posted by Evil Chris
Baseball players are the most spoiled brat athletes out there in my opinion.
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Uh oh. Here we go again.
I do tend to agree with you on that, but by the same token HOCKEY players recently seemed to have taken to that way of thinking.
I placed a lot of the blame of Bob Goodenow and stand by that. I'm not a fan of Gary Bettman, but I do believe Goodenow's financial expectations for his players was WAY out of whack.
Here's the worst example I've ever seen, of ANY player I can think of (Terrell Owens being the possible exception). It may have been stupid for management to make the contract front loaded, but it was still the player and the agent who were ultimately at fault for not honoring the contract. In fact, I'm curious as to why a player has yet to be sued for breach of contract. I'm waiting for that to happen. It will put things back into perspective for the players.
Anyways, about 1994 I believe Keith Tkachuk signed a front loaded contract (I'm not positive on the numbers, but the example is close). First year 10 million dollars, second year 2 million, third year 2 million. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he DID (although I'm not positive) honour year two. He held out the final year of his contract for more money, because he WASN'T WORTH ONLY TWO MILLIONS DOLLARS PER YEAR. Noone ever said hockey players were great at math, but my calculations make it closer to FIVE million dollars per year. Was he worth TEN million dollars? He didn't have any problem collecting that money.
The NHL doesn't make the same money that the NFL does, or MLB does, so they shouldn't expect the same kind of money. OR, GIVE them that money, watch 8 teams fold and the union will lose 25% of their jobs and membership. THAT I honestly wouldn't mind seeing. It would also help weed out some of the inferior players playing in the NHL today.
But hopefully the union and owners stay the current course and realize they can both make FAIR money by working together instead of the players being pissed off that the owners make ANY money at all (Something THIS industry needs to keep in mind as well).
Note-I'm also aware that revenue sharing IS an important aspect of this and that the owners DO deserve some fault for not implementing it sooner like the NFL. But that by no means takes away from the greediness of the players and Bob Goodenow.