{"id":39142,"date":"2025-07-26T16:51:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T16:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/39142\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T16:51:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T16:51:01","slug":"getting-a-new-cba-without-a-lockout-is-bad-actually-the-contrarian-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/39142\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting a new CBA without a lockout is bad, actually: The Contrarian returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s late July, we\u2019re two months away from games that matter, and NHL GMs have apparently taken the rest of the summer off<\/a>. Let\u2019s get Contrarian.<\/p>\n

This is the feature where you send in your most obvious takes, and I tell you that you\u2019re wrong, whether I believe it or not. In the past, we\u2019ve made the case that Mark Messier was a great Canuck<\/a>, Ray Bourque\u2019s Cup win was bad<\/a>, but Brett Hull\u2019s crease goal was good<\/a>\u00a0and Bobby Orr\u2019s flying goal photo is overrated<\/a>. Last time, we made the case for Alex Ovechkin being an overrated bum, and also for Alex Ovechkin being an underrated legend, because we\u2019re flexible like that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This time, we\u2019ve got a new CBA, an old legend and everything in between. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n

Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.<\/p>\n

The NHL and NHLPA agreeing on a new CBA quickly and without any work-stoppage drama is a good thing. \u2014 Kevin S.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Kevin S., you twit. Unless, of course, you\u2019re an owner.<\/p>\n

Are you an owner, Kevin? Are you?<\/p>\n

Because if not, you should be concerned about what we just saw play out. We had the two sides of this multibillion-dollar industry come together, and the result was a one-sided victory for the owners, one that appeared to come with next to no resistance from the players. Sure, they got a few minor concessions in the form of payroll taxes and an increased playoff fund. But in today\u2019s NHL, those \u201cwins\u201d represent pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, the owners got more games, shorter contracts and smaller bonuses. And they\u2019ll keep all the coming expansion money, a multibillion-dollar windfall that the players didn\u2019t even seem to try to get a piece of.<\/p>\n

And sure, you can see why it played out that way. After all, this is Gary Bettman\u2019s NHL, where history shows us how these things usually go. If the players try to stand up for themselves, even a little, Bettman shuts everything down. Sometimes the players win<\/a>, sometimes they lose,<\/a> and sometimes nobody\u2019s even sure<\/a>, but it always comes with a cost in a league where careers are short. When it comes to work stoppages, Bettman isn\u2019t bluffing. He\u2019s proven that over the years. So why even try?<\/p>\n

The position was summed up perfectly by a player quoted in this excellent piece<\/a>. \u201cWhat can we do? There can\u2019t be another lockout,\u201d the player said. \u201cThose don\u2019t go our way. It\u2019s better to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can we do?\u201d indeed. That\u2019s rational, on some level. But it\u2019s not healthy. And it\u2019s not fair to the players, who are the reason we watch this league. Nobody thinks that Marty Walsh should have come in with guns blazing, trying to recreate the animosity of the Bob Goodenow era. But if this were a hockey fight, it sure looks like the owners wiggled their gloves and the players immediately turtled.<\/p>\n

After three decades of Bettman\u2019s \u201cshut it down\u201d approach, we now have labor peace. But that peace apparently just means the players roll over without any sign of a fight, while the owners tilt the ice even further at every opportunity. That\u2019s good news for fans who just wanted to watch hockey without hearing from the accountants and mediators. But it\u2019s not a good thing for the game.<\/p>\n

The 4 Nations Face-Off was an overwhelming success for the NHL. \u2014 James<\/p>\n

On the contrary, James, you clodpoll.<\/p>\n

Was it fun? Of course. Did it blow away expectations? I\u2019d say so. Did the best team win? Indisputably.<\/p>\n

But that last bit is the problem. You\u2019re talking about what\u2019s best for the NHL. And when it comes to best-on-best tournaments, here\u2019s what\u2019s best for the NHL: Team USA finally winning one of these things.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. That\u2019s what needs to happen. If you could hook Bettman and friends and up to lie detectors, they\u2019d tell you that\u2019s the whole point. From the league\u2019s perspective, shutting down a season for a best-on-best showdown is ultimately a marketing exercise. And when it comes to marketing this sport in the USA, only one result moves the needle. And Team Canada winning \u2014 again, like they always do \u2014 isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

Short of a Team USA win, this year\u2019s tournament delivered everything you could ask for, including a signature moment: The infamous Nine Seconds from the round robin, the rare hockey game that seemed to take over the sports discourse for days. Fans of other sports were hooked because what they were watching didn\u2019t look anything like the leagues they were used to.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it didn\u2019t look much like the modern NHL either, meaning that wild night in Montreal couldn\u2019t draw in new fans on its own. The tournament needed the right outcome, and it didn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n

American sports fans will dip in to sample best-on-best hockey, as the record ratings for the 4 Nations final<\/a> show. But they want to see a happy ending. They didn\u2019t get it this year, just like they didn\u2019t in 2002 or 2010 or any other year beyond 1996, which is too long ago to matter. And that\u2019s why they don\u2019t stick around. Less than four months later, we got a Stanley Cup Final featuring a rematch between Connor McDavid, who scored the OT winner, and Matthew Tkachuk, who worked hard to make himself the face of Team USA. Nobody watched<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Well, they watched in Canada, as they always do. But the NHL has been clear over the years: When it comes to Canada, the only priority is to cash as big a check as possible from Sportsnet every decade or so. Beyond that, they couldn\u2019t care less.)<\/p>\n

The bottom line: There\u2019s a reason that the typical American sports fan still thinks a round-robin upset from 1980 is the most important hockey game ever played. Until a Team USA can deliver that sort of moment again, nothing is going to be a \u201csuccess\u201d for the NHL, in any way that matters to league leadership. American players can keep kicking the can down the road, always telling us that the next tournament is the one that matters<\/a>. But eventually, they\u2019re going to need to do more than talk a good game.<\/p>\n

The decentralized draft was awful, and the GMs of this league proved their incompetence by voting for its return. \u2014 Jackson S.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Jackson, you dumbbell.<\/p>\n

I mean, you\u2019re right about the first part \u2014 the decentralized draft that we all watched a few weeks ago was, indeed, awful. I wrote that at the time<\/a>, and not many of you disagreed.<\/p>\n

But was it awful because it was a decentralized draft? Or was it awful because it was the first decentralized draft (of the modern era, that wasn\u2019t forced on us by a pandemic)? Or did the NHL just try a few things that didn\u2019t work, in a way they can learn from and fix for next year\u2019s edition?<\/p>\n

The answer is we don\u2019t know. But we\u2019ll find out, because they\u2019re doing it again next year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s upset some fans, especially the kind of whiny babies who never like anything<\/a>. But the reality is that we had decades of centralized drafts and one year of the alternative. We can\u2019t know if the new way can work. All we know is that it didn\u2019t, once.<\/p>\n

The league deserves a chance to ditch the cringey Zoom interviews, figure out a way to speed things along and try again. If that one stinks, then fine, attack the GMs if they insist on sticking with it. Just not yet.<\/p>\n

Comment sections are trash. \u2014 Paul W.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Paul, you (tries to think of the most insulting label possible), commenter.<\/p>\n

Comment sections can be great \u2026 sometimes. If I had to guess, I\u2019d bet that 90 percent of the commenters on a typical post of mine are pretty cool, even if they don\u2019t agree with what they\u2019ve just read.<\/p>\n

Of course, that number can get a lot higher depending on whose post it is and what the subject matter might be. I generally get to play on easy mode, because how fired up can you really get over stuff like this<\/a>? I\u2019ve seen some really interesting discussions break out in my comment sections, not to mention having some really neat suggestions for future posts.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t take much to ruin the vibe, even if 90 percent of people are cool \u2014 nobody\u2019s fine with 10 percent turd content in their punchbowl. And yeah, some of you are just weird. That includes the garden variety trolls and those who\u2019ve made a permanent state of grievance into their whole personality. It also includes some sports- and hockey-specific types, like the super-homers, or the \u201cslow news day?\u201d slugs, or the Leaf-pilled anti-fans who make everything about one team and then complain about it, or the single-issue obsessives, or the stick-to-sports losers, or Bruins fans. It is what it is.<\/p>\n

So what can you do? Not much, unfortunately. You can ignore the troll, upvote the first guy telling them they\u2019re an idiot, and then move on. (Piling on in the same thread just makes it look like that comment is the most important one on the piece.) Other than that, just be cool, remind yourself that we\u2019re talking about a game here, and remember that sometimes it\u2019s OK to just not post anything.<\/p>\n

That story about the Oilers learning how to win from the Islanders in 1983 is one of hockey\u2019s best. \u2014 Sean M.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Sean, you \u2026 wait, this is me. I\u2019m submitting my own questions. That\u2019s kind of pathetic, but in my defense, I basically asked you guys to send this one in a few weeks ago and nobody took the bait.<\/p>\n

So yeah, on the contrary, Sean, you absolute beauty. The Oilers\/Islanders story is bad, and we need to stop bringing it up every year at playoff time.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve somehow missed it, the story goes like this: It\u2019s 1983 and the upstart young Oilers are facing the Islanders in the Stanley Cup Final. They\u2019re the better team, in terms of regular-season record, and have all the pieces in place. But the Islanders are a dynasty, having won three straight Cups. Sure enough, the Isles sweep the series. After the deciding game, various Oilers players (including Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier in most tellings) walk by New York\u2019s dressing room, expecting to see a raucous celebration. Instead, they see a bunch of beaten-up players with ice packs, barely celebrating at all because of how much they\u2019ve left on the ice. At that moment, the Oilers finally understand what it takes to be a winner, and they go on to beat those same Islanders one year later for the first of five Cups in seven years.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Gretzky himself spinning the tale:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an awesome story. You can see why fans love it. It\u2019s also completely fake.<\/p>\n

I mean, come on. Let\u2019s use some common sense. We\u2019re supposed to believe that the Islanders have just won the Stanley Cup, and they\u2019re all sitting in their locker room with the door open for some reason. Nobody\u2019s celebrating. Nobody\u2019s happy. They\u2019re just all strapping ice packs to their broken limbs or whatever, not even so much as cracking a beer, even though just a few minutes earlier they looked like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re buying that? Really? Because if so, I\u2019m inviting you over to play the new Super Mario that I got from my uncle, who works at Nintendo.<\/p>\n

Now, does this mean I\u2019m calling Gretzky a liar? Not necessarily. He\u2019s not a historian, he\u2019s a storyteller, and he\u2019s going back 40-plus years for this one. He\u2019s not making things up out of nothing. I don\u2019t doubt that he may have walked past that room, and maybe things weren\u2019t as boisterous as he expected. He\u2019s just exaggerating, being dramatic and shaping a story over the decades in a way that plays best. But what he\u2019s describing didn\u2019t happen that way.<\/p>\n

And if you don\u2019t believe me, why not ask somebody who was there: Islanders\u2019 legend Bryan Trottier. He was on a podcast a few months ago and mentioned the legend of the quiet dressing room. He says it\u2019s not true, or at least not accurate, the way Gretzky tells it. \u201cThat\u2019s not the way we remember it,\u201d<\/a> he says. Instead, he says that somebody told the Islanders players when the Oilers were on their way past the room, so they quieted down the ongoing celebration out of respect for their opponent, not wanting to seem like they were rubbing it in. But they were celebrating. Of course they were. They\u2019d just won the Stanley Cup!<\/p>\n

That version makes sense, and squares with where Gretzky (and others) got this idea in the first place. But over the years, it\u2019s morphed into the Islanders\u2019 post-Cup room being a morgue. That\u2019s not true, it was never true, and it\u2019s not a good lesson about how to win. When you achieve a lifelong dream, you absolutely should celebrate. And the Islanders did.<\/p>\n

You know who else did? The Oilers! If the story had really played out the way the modern version does, and was so instrumental to Edmonton learning how to win, shouldn\u2019t their celebrations have been muted? Instead, this is the team that invented the Cup handoffs and team photos and maybe did some other things<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Does that sound like a team that had learned that the key to winning was being too beat up to be happy about it? No, because that never happened. Let\u2019s stop pretending it did.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to submit a take for future editions of The Contrarian, you can do that here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Photo of Islanders\u2019 Bryan Trottier hoisting the Stanley Cup in 1983: Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s late July, we\u2019re two months away from games that matter, and NHL GMs have apparently taken the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99,1794],"class_list":{"0":"post-39142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-sports-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}