Remember Hockey?

Is it me, or is the demonization of NHL owners completely illogical?

Led by the perpetually booed commisioner Gary Bettman, the owners are sticking to their demand for a hard salary cap and are completely prepared to scrub the season (and a chunk of next season) to do it. Isn't that obvious? And, perhaps because he hasn't had anything to write for months, Larry Brooks browbeats the owners for PR moves and bad faith negotiation.

Question: What is wrong with a salaray cap? The owners and the players are in this together. It's not either group's exclusive fault that salaries have launched out of control. It's the system--one in which owner's outbid each other to remain competitive and players' agents drive up the price for their clients. This system would work fine in a league with limlitless funds at its disposal, but the NHL has been bleeding cash for years. And pointing to the owners' other, primary streams of revenue misses the point.

The NHL should be self-sustaining. NHL Players Association President Trevor Linden and Executive Director Bob Goodenow work hard for their money. But does anyone seriously believe that they should be sharing in money that Vancouver Canucks owner John McCaw earns from his other businesses?

Owners and players can legitimately argue over the best way to divide the NHL cake, but restrictions need to be installed. Because it is only one cake they are dividing--and one for which the distracted, but lucrative American audience only has a limited taste. The players can't demand that the owners bake a second tier just because they can.

According to former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt's NHL-commissioned report, the league lost a combined $273 million in 2002-03. Forbes issued its own report saying that the figure was more likely $123 million. Still bad, no? Especially when you consider that two-thirds of the league's 30 teams lose money and 75% of revenues are tied up in player salaries (compared with a maximum of 64 percent and minimum of 54 percent in the NFL, 60 percent in the NBA and 63 percent in Major League Baseball).

Something isn't right here, and patchwork solutions and negotiation tactics won't solve it. The NHL needs a complete restructuring and it will surely need to get sicker before recuperating.

A salary cap doesn't prevent players from making what their are worth. It simply sets a more realistic value on that worth for the health of the league. A league, that few people really seem to miss these days. Except for restless rabble-rousers like Brooks.