MEMBERS OF THE NHLPA MAY BE REALLY P.O.'D AFTER THIS SEASON

If Al Strachan's column in today's Toronto Sun is any indicator, by the end of this season all hockey fans will be sick of the words "escrow payment."

Most fans are aware that after the NHL's nuclear winter, the players agreed to have their salaries deducted if the owners spent too much. (A certain percentage of their paycheques was kept in escrow, hence the term, but it was returned to them at the end of the season since the league set the bar low. And everyone was relatively happy. However, according to Strachan's unnamed sources -- agents, at that! -- the players could end up giving back up to 17.5% of their salaries in '06-07 . (Imagine doing that at your job -- having your pay docked not because of anything you did or didn't do, but because management messed up. Would you be happy?)

In other words, a player who might have pulled down $6 million pre-lockout and was reduced to $5 million a year in the new deal could be busted down to $4.25 million.

File this away so you won't be surprised if there is strike or lockout talk sometime late in the 2007-08 season, when the players will have the right to terminate the current labour agreement. Or perhaps they may strike to just before the '08-09 playoffs. In either scenario, it will be the agents for the top-end players stirring the pot, and it's questionable whether the NHL Players' Association rank-and-fill will have the stomach for another labour battle so soon after the lockout, but that's another column.

Strachan notes this is a non-starter for most fans:

They see projections like this and they shrug their shoulders. They feel that the players are well paid and if they have to give some of it back, so what?

Also, after a full year of reading about labour negotiations instead of hockey, they're sick of the turmoil.

But the fact remains that if this season turns out to be the kind of economic kick in the tender parts that the agents predict, there will be even more trouble on the labour front."

Of course, the real story is that new NHL, MyNHL or whatever, Gary Bettman and his buddies still don't know how to increase revenues, particularly in the U.S., so the players, whose peak earning periods are very finite, have to suffer.

Fans see all the big-dollar free-agent signings and the whopping arbitration awards and they think that the owners are overspending again.

They are. But they're spending the players' money. Once the salaries exceed 54% of league revenues, the players have to make up the shortfall. That's where the escrow comes in.

Salaries have moved up across the board on a league-wide basis. Way up. But percentage-wise, "reported revenues" haven't kept pace in relation to the salary cap.

There was no reason to expect that they would. During Gary Bettman's tenure as commissioner, the only serious revenue increases were brought about by expansion.

So in other words, you could say the owners caused the last labour dispute by paying ridiculous salaries and failing to properly promote the sport, and now they're doing it again, since they know the fans and a good number of the media will side with them.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.