Might as well plan to spend the fall getting to know the family, fellas.

By Jack Todd

For Postmedia News

MONTREAL — I hate talking hockey in July. Then again, it looks like that’s all we’ll be able to do in November – talk hockey.

It’s probably no coincidence that news of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s scorched-earth proposal to Donald Fehr and the NHL Players Association leaked at the beginning of a July weekend, when you were swatting flies at the cabin, putting down industrial quantities of Molson’s finest or cooling off at the neighbourhood pool.

Bettman is likely to get away with it, or at least part of it, because at this point, the only thing he has to fear is Fehr himself.

Some folks in these parts blame Fehr — former executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association — for the Montreal Expos lost shot at a World Series back in 1994 – but among sports union leaders, Fehr is up there with Marvin Miller. He was brought in because he’s a heavyweight and this is a heavyweight bout, with enormous stakes.

If you thought Bettman might be at least somewhat conciliatory in order to save the season, you thought wrong. As Larry Brooks of the New York Post (admittedly not Bettman’s dearest friend) tweeted: “NHL proposal amounts to declaration of war against NHLPA.”

It’s only an initial bargaining position – but for Bettman to propose lowering the players’ share of revenues from 57 per cent to 46 per cent is ludicrous, especially at a time when the league is boasting about the increase in overall revenue.

The reports (the initial one coming from Renaud Lavoie at RDS) say the NHL offer would also limit contracts to five years (the one plank with which we are in agreement).

But the proposal would also force players to wait 10 years to become unrestricted free agents, do away with signing bonuses, extend low-paying entry-level contracts for a five-year term rather than the current three, and put an end to salary arbitration. Future deals would also have to have an equal value for each year to do away with front-loading contracts.

This after boasting that league revenue has soared to a record $3.3 billion from $2.2 billion in 2003-04, before the last lockout. Back then, players were taking 75 per cent of a smaller pie. Now they’re down to 57 per cent and Bettman wants to cut it by a further 11 per cent, and to achieve more than that in terms of his overall cuts by all the changes in the structure of free agency and contracts.

The Edmonton Journal calculated that the 43 per cent of the money divided among the owners amounted to $1.42 billion (after the players were paid) meaning that on a per-team basis, revenue increased from $18.3 million in 2003-04 to $47.3 million in 2011-12.

If some franchises are ailing, then, the problem is that the league does not have an adequate revenue-sharing system in place, not that the owners share of revenue is inadequate. Rather than share with each other, however, the owners will attempt to fix their problems by going after the players.

Then, as soon as a new CBA is in place, the owners will go to work to circumvent it. And the fans, the people who swear up and down that they’ll never watch another NHL game, will be the first ones in line to buy season tickets when the league returns.

Might as well plan to spend the fall getting to know the wife and family, fellas. Whatever you do, don’t buy the spin Bettman will try to put on another lockout. This column will be 100 per cent behind Fehr and the players, every step of the way.

• The shame of Pennsylvania: I’ve received a dozen emails asking why the names of Jerry Sandusky and Joe Paterno don’t appear in the “Zeros” section here.

The answer is that the Zeros are meant to be fairly light. Jacques Villeneuve might be spoiled and Patrice Brisebois a whiner – but you can’t lump them with monsters like Sandusky and Paterno.

Yes, Paterno also ranks as a monster – because he knew. We now know that Paterno knew as far back as 1998 that Sandusky was a sexual predator who was molesting children. Not only did he do nothing, he participated actively in the cover-up. As by far the most powerful figure at his university, Paterno had the ability to see to it that Sandusky was stopped – or to cover it up in order to protect his own football program.

Not only did Paterno orchestrate the cover-up, he also negotiated a fatter contract for himself while the scandal festered. It was the ultimate illustration of the coach-as-god mentality that prevails on too many American campuses.

Zeros? If I could, I’d assign Sandusky and Paterno to their own circle of Hell, because calling them “zeros” is far too mild.

• Birth of a bad idea: It’s amazing the rationale that Bell, RDS and the CRTC can come up with for killing TSN 990, Montreal’s English-language sports radio station. It makes sense to bureaucrats and greedheads, maybe, but not to people who care about sports in Montreal and either can’t or don’t wish to listen to a French station.

It might be a hopeless quest, but this one calls for a full-court press to save our sports station, which is home to some of the best pros in town – including Mitch Melnick.

Yes, Melnick has probably hammered me harder and more often than anyone else, but I know talent when I hear it and Melnick is arguably the most talented English sportscaster in town. He’ll probably catch on somewhere – but he shouldn’t have to move.

The radio business is tough enough without the CRTC making it worse. If the bureaucrats want to do something useful, they could block the sale of Astral to Bell. These vast media monopolies are good for no one – especially not the listeners who want quality local radio.

Heroes: TSN 990, Mitch Melnick, Patrick Lavoie, Gerald Brown, Bradley Wiggins, Teemu Selanne, Eugenie Bouchard, Filip Peliwo, Patrice Bernier, Melky Cabrera, R.A. Dickey, Andrew McCutchen, Gio Gonzalez, Stephen Strasburg, Matt Cain &&&& last but not least, the National League – because we have always hated the DH.

Zeros: Gary Bettman, Lance Armstrong, Joao Havelange, Sepp Blatter, Serena Williams, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Hope Solo, Jeffrey Loria, David Samson, Claude Brochu, Rick Nash, Pierre Gauthier, Patrice Brisebois, John Terry, RDS, Bell &&&& last but not least, the CRTC for the attempting to destroy English sports radio in Montreal.

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

PN 7/15/12 15:46:36