32 Thoughts: The Podcast - Quick Check In

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Talks around the 2021 NHL season are heating up. Jeff and Elliotte break down what they’ve heard regarding start and end dates, fans in the stands, sponsorship and the negotiation between the league and its players. This episode is dedicated to the late Erin Paul. Our condolences to her family and friends. This podcast is […]

from an unfortunate situation. Teams were saying, we're not doing what we did with Vegas again. We're not making those mistakes. Yeah. I'm starting to show that way because I loved it too. I absolutely loved it.

Dude, that escape was hilarious. Gotta go, bye. It's gonna be the same. Yeah, it was so good. You didn't even give him a chance to follow up or anything. It was... All right, boys.

I gotta go. All right, buddy. Tea time. Enjoy. Get I gotta go. Tea time. Enjoy. Get out of here. Alright, thanks Freedj. Alright guys, take care. That's hilarious. Well Elliot,

the NHL is inching back to a return and we thought we'd put together a quick little podcast as we head into the weekend. Sort of stick the thermometer in the league, get a time and temperature on where we're at right now and maybe what next season could look like and elliot i stress the word could because true or false right now everything is fluid and we should take everything with a grain of salt cement hasn't hardened anywhere yet correct i think that's fair

to say there were some reports this week that maybe that we get a proposal at Thursday's Board of Governors call. I was told not to expect that, and that's certainly the way it turned out. I think some governors were disappointed there wasn't a bit more concrete stuff on Thursday's call, but I'm not surprised. There's a couple of things here. I think, first of all, the league and the players are talking more than they're letting on. By the way, Jeff, Amel's just sent me a text saying, Elliot, are you rolling? How incompetent Amel do you think I am? Of course I'm rolling. Elliot, he knows you well. He knows you well. That's completely legit. Amel, good for you. i think they've been talking quite a bit i think they've been working on some things but they're not ready

there i believe over the next couple of weeks as we head into u.s thanksgiving this is a critical time for can we hammer everything out now the one thing we should say before anything else is that covid cases are exploding all over north america and the world europe and i just think that everything we say is at the mercy of that and we know that and we should mention it first but the nba put the stake in the ground. They're hoping for December 22nd. That's their target date. And I think once that happened, the NHL even more started saying, okay,

what's our target date. And I think over the next two weeks, they're going to really try to see if they can get it done for January 1st. I don't know if that's going to be possible. I think January 15th is more likely. That's my opinion, but they're going to try for January 1st. And the reason they want to go as early as possible is that what they've learned in their conversations with Major League Baseball and the NFL is the longer you wait, the less

ability you have to be flexible when cancellations or postponements or COVID just hits you. So the more runway you give yourself, the more you can adjust on the fly. And that is the philosophy I think both the league and the players share. The players are itching to play. It's November. They're wired to play. They want to play. They want to get paid.

There is a lot of motivation on both sides to get this started, but COVID and the salary issue are obviously the two big concerns. Okay. A couple of things there, and I want to get to the idea of just get started and then adapt. But first, as you talked about the NBA and December 22nd, I'm looking at this like, remember when you're a kid and you used to go to the pool and you'd go up on the diving tower, whether you're up like a three meter or 15 meter or whatever it is, you get up there and you realize, oh, this might be too high for me, but everybody's on the ladder behind you saying, go, go, go.

Is that kind of, and you kind of have to. Is the NBA saying we're going on December 22nd, essentially those kids that were behind you saying, come on, come on, let's go. We're already, we've already made our decision. I don't know if it was so much that it was more like, well, they've made their decision. What are we doing do you not think that was a nut because we kept hearing even things like okay they could maybe january 15th

or something into february maybe even as late as march who knows and then it seemed almost the conversation shifted around hockey when the nba said december 22nd that's when we're going absolutely there's no question like there was a an executive committee meeting or call last friday and i think that's where the push really really started like they've got their dates let's go here and like i said i think the players really want to play like if you're a player you're wired to play we're taping this on friday the 13th friday the 13th you're normally a month five weeks into your season let's go here so i think there's a lot of that jeff now i will say this i think the players want to play i think the league wants to play i think there are

some teams without fans here that are not as eager and especially if there's not going to be able to be a deal made on the salaries and i had some people saying to me boy that could be a really wild board meeting yesterday i don't think it was and i think one of the reasons is that i think the commissioner is well aware of who's got the big concerns and he's dealing with them privately and he doesn't want the dirty laundry aired publicly. I think he knows which teams are specifically worried, how he's going to have to address it or how they want it to be addressed. I really believe that the return to play was a bigger challenge for Donald Feer than it was Gary Bettman. They knew it was going to be the players in two bubbles and you know 21% of the players voted against it. We don't see stuff like that.

That was herding cats for Donald Feer. It was a bigger challenge for him than it was for the league at that time. The owners were kind of out of it. Here I think the positions are reversed. The players want to play. They've signed a a deal now you've got owners feeling differently than some owners feeling differently than others this is the bigger challenge for the league i think ultimately betman gets things done when he wants to get things done but they're not there yet and i think over the next couple weeks they're going to try to get there i think to to the point about players, Elliot, it seems as if, and you talk to all these guys and I bump into them at various ranks as they continue to train. I mean, they're hardwired to be playing right now.

This is all they've like, this is really uncomfortable for them. This is a hue and cry. Every time I talk to a player is, you know, my whole life I've been playing right now. This is a really uncomfortable feeling. And even when players retire, they'll tell you that. Like, I'm not used to not being on the ice right now. Like, this is a really uncomfortable feeling. But I want to get to the owner's issues, the player's issues.

But just as far as the idea of getting this going, and you winked at this a couple of seconds ago, would it be safe to say that the appetite is to just baseball style right just get started and then adapt as the season goes on and make sure perhaps you leave yourself a little bit extra runway at the end in case you do need to pause would that be accurate that is one thing they are absolutely discussing is do we leave two weeks at the end of the season where we have room to make up games if we need to make up games that is being discussed and then if you don't need to you just move up the playoffs the the end date i've heard is july 15th they don't want to play after july 15th that's the last i've heard that date may change but that's where we are right now so i had heard earlier in the week jeff that they were talking between 56 and

72 games i did see one report on thursday they were talking between 48 and 60 maybe they've moved it down i heard 48 was not going to be the case if they started january 1st but you know the one thing i do believe is they're modeling all sorts of different schedules i'm sure they have a lot of permutations there. And there is, true or false, a large push for teams playing in their home rinks. And a lot of that revolves around activating sponsorships and obviously arena naming rights. Yes, and I heard this was pretty recent.

Like someone said to me that from what they had heard as recently as last week, the first week of November, they were talking about hubs and a setup like that. And then it changed like in the last seven days. And I think it is that, you know, for example, if you have naming rights on a building and, you rogers our company has obviously vancouver and edmonton scotia bank has calgary and toronto your naming rights are not as valuable if your buildings are not being used you know you don't get that mention you don't get the ability to say okay we paid this much to have our name in your building. Well, there's nothing happening in your building. We're not getting our money's worth. And I've heard that's an issue. And also

there's the question of travel costs. What's cheaper playing out of your own buildings or, you know, having a hub. Well, you know, one of the things somebody told me was they might go to the players and say, if're flying a short distance you know toronto to ottawa or montreal calgary edmonton vancouver to each other would they be willing to fly in game day like if you're playing back to back would you be willing to fly in the morning of the first game and save i don't know what is a night save twenty thousand dollars i don't know but like i think all of this stuff is absolutely out there and you want to save your sponsorship deals. I was on Calgary Radio today, Friday, and they were asking me about

last year, the league saying at the end, when the deal was done, they were talking about 82 games next season. And I think we all knew that was very difficult to be possible. But one of the reasons you do it is the moment you start saying less than 82 games, your sponsors start coming out and saying, okay, what does that mean for our deals? And so like, I do think Jeff that obviously look, it's like Watergate, right? Follow the money.

You always have to follow the money. Players are following the money and the money for the players right off the top cap cap 20 escrow uh 10 referral as well as you talk to players as you talk to agents what are the chief concerns from a player's point of view and what are the issues still elliot to be hammered out financially as far as player compensation goes between the pa and the NHL? Obviously, the number one thing is salary. So, as you said, the players signed a deal last year, 10% deferral, which takes their gross pay down to 90, and then a 20% escrow, and 20% of 90 is 18. So, that takes their pay down to 72% of gross.

down to 72% of gross. And they believe that the writing of that says we get 72% of our gross, whether we play one game or we play 82 games, one or the other, that's it. Now, at some point, the league has gone to the players and said, we're going to have to talk about this. And so the players know it's coming. Now, the solution here because i think the teams have said we can't do this without proration it doesn't make sense and so now we've got a negotiation that's going to have to happen here now i had one person say to me oh maybe what the league will do is they'll say look if we play 56 games we'll pay you for 66. So you won't get your full 82, but you'll get 10 more games than you will play. I don't know if that's going to be acceptable. I had some people say to me they didn't like that idea. I've heard that the players

have kind of hinted that maybe the answer is instead of a 10% deferral until later, we do a 20% deferral until later. So this year, that would mean the players would get about 64% of their salaries. I don't know if that would be acceptable to the league, but I do think these conversations are going to happen because I know there's some teams out there who really feel if they play, and again, I'm going to use the number 56. I don't know what it's going to be. If they play 56 games and pay for 82, they're going to get hammered. They're not going to be able to make it work. You know, one quote that really stood out to me today is I retweeted a story by Ramona Shelburne, who covers the NBA for ESPN. It was a really interesting story with the owners of the Golden State Warriors,

and they have a background in this kind of thing. One of the places the NBA and the NHL were really worried about was California. They were worried their teams weren't going to be able to play there, and now they look like they're going to be able to play there, but the Lakers told their fans the other day there's going to be nobody in the building for the foreseeable future.

Well, the owner of the Warriors wants 50%, and he says it's going to come through rapid testing which he is has a lot of expertise on and it's an interesting article and i don't know enough about the science so i'm not going to say it's going to work one way or the other but the one thing he did say was you know if we will go without fans for two, there's going to be no NBA. So if the NBA feels that, hockey feels that, and look, like Jeff, we have a vested interest in this. We'd be lying to people if we said we didn't. The league has a vested interest.

The teams have a vested interest. The players have a vested interest. Those of us who cover the league have a vested interest. We're all in this together, and none of us have control over it so some way somehow like the end of the day i think the players want to play i think the league wants to play i just think some owners are going to say look i can understand i'm going to lose 30 million am i willing to lose 50 million and that's what we have to kind of bridge here so one of the questions that i've had through all of this is when you consider there will be some buildings where fans are allowed in, a percentage of fans. I don't know how high it gets or how low it is, but there'll be safe to say there'll be

some buildings where fans will be allowed in and probably there'll be some buildings where fans will not be allowed in. Where does the gate revenue go? Have they had that discussion? Did they do that at the board of governors meeting? Do you just say, well, team X will just say Los Angeles Kings because you mentioned Los Angeles, Los Angeles Kings, you won the COVID lottery. You can put, you know, you can fill your building up 50% and stick that money in your jeans. Or do you say, hold on a second here, just because by way of geography, you win the

COVID lottery doesn't mean that you get to keep all that money. Does it then go into a pool and then get divided up? Are we at that point of the conversation yet in all of this, Elliot? You know what? I don't know that. I have not heard that. The one thing I was reminded about when I wrote about what revenue sharing has to be changed is the players association has to be involved in those discussions. I don't have the answer to you yet, but believe me, I know that there's a lot of people who are very curious about it.

A lot of Canadian hockey fans curious and perhaps excited as maybe, you know, the one bit of, I don't know, silver lining in all of this, the idea of a Canadian division, which more and more seems to be yeah it seems to look like the way they're going to do this right out of the gate well look like the cases are exploding you can't see the border opening while that's happening and i would expect that that's at the very least where we're going to start right would our tv audience love to see it

sure they would yeah i don't think the league was crazy about this. I don't think it's something they really wanted to do, but you know, sometimes you have to do things that you have no control over. It seems Elliot as well. And it's every league that's going through this, even, you know,

minor hockey or youth hockey is, it's called stateside. You know, my kids, you know, hockey Canada has pretty much said, look, this is going to be a band-aid year, stay on the ice as much as you can. It's going to be a training year. Our goal is to get things back to normal for 21-22. Safe to say the NHL is the same way. Like there's a,

you mentioned the July end date, you know, that's going to be able to give the nhl a a decent off season and get things back to normal for next season safe to say this is this is the lens the nhl is looking through here yes uh i think that's absolutely the case you you want to get back to what is normal and i believe that that's what they're going to try to do i mean you also don't forget there's the winter olympics next year and they're supposed to go so you what they're going to try to do. I mean, also don't forget there's the Winter Olympics next year and they're supposed to go. So you know you're going to have a broken up schedule in the middle of next year too.

Before I wrap up here, one more thing, because you mentioned Olympics. That last date or that final potential date in July, how much of that is due to the summer games? It's a lot. And I do think there was a conversation, Jeff, that was brought up. And one governor told me about it, that somebody did raise the question, look, do we really have to stop playing before the Olympics?

And I don't think he was saying they should. I think it was more like, let's have a conversation about it. And one thing that the TV numbers told us last year is that if you're not on your regular schedule, it's not beneficial. So I don't think they want anything to do with the Olympics. I think they want to be done. Like I said, July 15th was the target date, was the last possible date I heard. And I think if they learned anything it's

that you you don't want to veer off your normal schedule as little as you can it just you just don't want to do that so i think they had the conversation does it matter if we play during the olympics and i think what they learned was the answer to that question was yes. Okay, so there's a snapshot of what we believe the league could slash will look like when it returns. And again, no one's married to any of these ideas right now. As you mentioned, nothing is set in stone. This is a very fluid situation.

So as more information becomes available, safe to say you could probably expect some more podcasts and follow Elliot on Twitter and 31ThoughtsBlog at sportsnet.ca. I want to mention as well, today's edition of 31 Thoughts, the podcast, Elliot, is dedicated to the memory of a dear friend that we both very much knew who passed away this past week, and that's our former colleague, Aaron Paul. Well, we both knew Aaron, and we were gutted to hear what had happened, and we just wanted to send our best to her friends and her family.

It's awful. Too young. There are a few people that I've ever met, Elliot, that have enjoyed laughing as much as Aaron, and I know how much she loved her daughter, Allie, and that's how I'll always remember her, someone that laughed and someone that loved. Rest well, Erin.