Gary Bettman still saying ‘I told you so’ about NHL’s cap crisis

PHILADELPHIA — I have always believed that there is a lot of, “I told you so,” in Gary Bettman, who even when he didn’t, most often insists that he did.

That is what I think is at the root of the odd solo dance conducted by the NHL commissioner who in October, kind of out of nowhere, tantalizingly dangled the concept of a meaningful salary cap increase for next season before last week slipping into his familiar guise of Grinch in indicating to the Board of Governors that no such thing would be happening.

Instead, under terms of the collective bargaining agreement that was adopted in July 2020, the cap will be set to increase by just $1 million to $83.5 million, making 2023-24 another in a string of seasons in which at least half the league will be strangled by the cap. That is because the massive escrow debt incurred by the NHL Players’ Association during the pandemic will not be paid off by the end of this season.

Of course it won’t. We are told that last spring, the NHLPA advised agents that the debt would not be satisfied until the end of the 2024-25 season. The idea that somehow the debt would evaporate two years ahead of schedule is the type of concept based on voodoo economics.

But, like a practiced carny, Bettman threw it out there before reeling it back in. Magic! I can’t quite fathom the reason why, unless it was to remind folks, both on his side of the aisle and those across the way caucusing with the NHLPA, that he had immediately foreseen the pain that the CBA would inflict on teams and suggested renegotiating the deal in December 2020, just about five months after it had been adopted.

Remember? Bettman wanted the players, who had agreed to a 10-percent deferral and 20-percent escrow cap for 2020-21, to give approximately another $300 million over the course of the season. That would have accelerated the debt payment and would have steered the NHL out of the flat-cap era more quickly.

There was surely self-interest involved in the league’s ask, but it also would have benefitted a vast majority of teams and, ultimately, a vast majority of players. But the NHLPA had no interest in reopening the agreement because the CBA was designed to make players under contract in 2020-21 as whole as possible. The single-issue escrow hawks in the NHL, those marquee veterans operating on long-term deals, had carried the day. The agreement was all about limiting escrow. It was not about growth. The overwhelming majority of players who would become free agents during the first three or four years of the agreement were sacrificed to keep escrow down on existing contracts. The union pyramid had been turned on its head.

But that is what the NHLPA wanted and that is what executive director Don Fehr negotiated and so the union rejected Bettman’s plea for an accommodation that would indeed have benefitted the NHL and the players.

I kind of think this dance was a reminder of that. Fully half the league is dipping into long-term injured reserve in order to remain compliant with the cap. The system will burst at the seams next summer. There was a way out in December 2020. The union chose not to take it.

There could be a way out now if, as we first suggested in this space two months ago, the league and union could reach an agreement to smooth out the $10 million increase in the cap that is projected over the next three seasons. Instead of the cap rising by $1 million and then by another $4.5 million to $5 million each of the subsequent two seasons, the parties could agree to an annual increase of approximately $3.3 million each of the next three seasons.

But that would entail a negotiation. The league never gives back anything for free. It is unknown what accommodations Bettman might seek (Honestly, doesn’t the league have all it needs?), but the NHLPA is hardly in a position to negotiate anything without a successor for the departing Fehr in place.

That is where we are, though. Bettman foresaw the flat-cap crunch way ahead of time. He was not alone, but he offered to do something about it. He kind of told you so. Still is.

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The NHL’s interest in increasing intradivision games by increasing the schedule from 82 to 84 games, first reported by ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, could be the give-back the union could trade for a smooth cap.

From the NHLPA side, that would be tantamount to getting Ryan Strome for Ryan Spooner.

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The hellacious open-ice hit that the Wild’s Ryan Reaves laid on Filip Hronek on Wednesday is legal under current rules. That tells you all you need to know about the efficacy of current rules in protecting players from brain damage.

Yes, the Red Wings defenseman should have kept his head up. Yes, he should have known that Reaves was on the ice, though No. 75 never came close to exploding someone in his year-plus as a Ranger as he did Hronek.

But the league has an obligation to protect its employees’ health. The union that reflexively contests and appeals suspensions applied to headhunters has an obligation to protect its members.

We know now what we did not know decades ago. Principal contact with the head must be outlawed. If that puts the onus on big-game hunters, so be it. Legal under the current rules must become illegal.

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Finally, I must confess that when Gerard Gallant said on Friday that, “We don’t want him blocking too many,” in reference to Artemi Panarin having blocked a shot at Vegas a couple of weeks ago, all I could think about was another Rangers coach benching Marian Gaborik in the third period of Game 5 of the 2012 conference finals against the Devils for his failure to block a shot.

Lost the game, lost the series.

Can’t quite think of who that might have been, though.