New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the state's Governor George Pataki are notorious for spending more time during budget battles sniping at each other through the media. These tactics outrage most New Yorkers since with a late budget each of the last 20 years, the leaders should be talking to each other and doing the business they're paid to do.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL Players' Association boss Bob Goodenow are apparently the National Hockey League's equivalent of New York's Tom and Jerry duo. The NHL has locked out the players because they want a new collective bargaining agreement. The owners are mad because someone's apparently holding a gun to their head to give mediocre, washed-up players $3 million a year contracts. The owners want an agreement that saves them from themselves. The players think the owners should try a little self-restraint rather than imposing a socialist salary cap on all team owners.
But rather than talking to each other, Beavis and Buttman attack each other through the media. The two haven't met once since the previous agreement ended over a month ago.
St Louis Blues' player Chris Pronger thinks both sides should stop the fruitless PR nonsense. The CBC reported that Pronger told the Peterborough Examiner on Thursday that players and owners who earn millions of dollars each year will never win public sympathy, and that the public relations battle is getting in the way of finding a solution to the labour dispute.
"If all the energy we've seen being wasted on public relations could be spent negotiating a deal, we could probably be halfway done a deal," said Pronger, who is also the Blues' NHL Players' Association representative. "Realistically, who cares whose side you are on, neither one of us looks good."
Ok, so Pronger is intelligent to realize that the fans, who pay through the nose for tickets (the most important source of revenue for NHL clubs), aren't going to have much sympathy for the petty squabbles of millionaires vs billionaires.
I'm glad somebody in this mess has a clue.
No comments:
Post a Comment