Jumping off from the much-linked Tim Wharnsby piece Cracks show in NHL player, owner partnership in Thursday's Globe & Mail, Tom Benjamin takes a look at the disincentive for growth created by the CBA. And for once, I think he misses the mark by a bit. Read the whole thing, but here's the gist of the argument:

Higher league revenues are not in the interest of any (not just American) individual team unless those increases are driven by their own or pooled centralized revenues... When the Leafs raise ticket prices, salaries go up for everyone. As pay per view expands in Vancouver, player costs are driven up in Washington.

The owner of the Atlanta Thrashers would be very happy to see Nashville stay put. If Hamilton generated $50 MM more than Nashville, the Thrashers don't see a penny of that money and player costs across the league go up by about $1 MM a team. Why does Atlanta want Nashville to move? Why would a Toronto? The Leafs might like the idea if it reduced revenue sharing costs but it won't because those are tied to revenues, too. If Nashville doesn't get the money, another poor team will get more.

[...] In the Gary Bettman Hockey League, the big market teams don't even have to spend to drive up salaries. Now salaries can be inflated by big market revenues whether the big boys spend or not. Most teams don't want to see league revenues grow.

The first point to make here is that, while I'm no fan of the CBA for all sorts of reasons, I fail to see how the CBA creates or exacerbates this problem, such as it is. It certainly is a rebuke to those who believed (as advertised) that the new CBA would usher in a new "one big happy family" world order, but it's not a problem created by the CBA.

When the Leafs raised ticket prices (or created new revenue streams) in the old days, salaries went up. When any team found a new way to make money, they'd use some of it on their player budget, which increased salaries. It happened via market forces rather that direct linkage, but it happened all the same. It doesn't mean much when Tom says "Now salaries can be inflated by big market revenues whether the big boys spend or not", because they did and do. It doesn't really matter what the system is: it is never going to be in Team A's direct & immediate interest for Team B to find new money and gain a competitive advantage.

That's not really the point I wanted to focus on, though: I point to Tom's piece because I think we have different senses of the interests of NHL owners in the grand scheme of things, and maybe the commenters can referee.

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In the context of competitive advantage (relating to player signing and thus on-ice success), maybe Tom is right when he says "The owner of the Atlanta Thrashers would be very happy to see Nashville stay put." But what about, "The owner of the Atlanta Thrashers was happy to see Jim Balsillie's bid for the Predators fail"? That is a different matter, and it seems to me a lot less likely to be true.

While Balsillie probably went too far with the selling of season tickets in Hamilton (and that stupid business with the Competition Bureau), I think he was right -- or rather, wise -- to make his big-dollar bid for the Predators with the plainly stated condition that he did not intend to keep them in Nashville. I think the aggressiveness of the thing was by design, despite that fact that he knew full well that the league machinery wasn't going to snap promptly to life and give him an "As you will!" And the design was to appeal directly to the 29 other owners' own interests, rather than Gary Bettman, or "The NHL" as a collective.

Think of it as a pop quiz, Speed-style, to any owner who has the imagination to realize that their best exit strategy someday might be a sale to someone who wants to relocate. "OK hotshot, so you feel like franchise relocation needs to be considered carefully, deliberately, and collectively. Fair enough. Now, what if that opinion could cost you 50 million bucks? What do you do? What do you do?"

My guess is that, among others, the owners of Atlanta and Florida threw up when they got word that Balsillie had been denied the Predators. I'm not denying that NHL owners can be long-range thinkers (see below); I am saying that the existing arguments against franchise relocation are nowhere near compelling enough to induce these guys to forsake tens of millions of dollars for themselves.

When Tom says that teams care more about themselves more than about "the league", he's right, but there's something missing there that's important. Order of concern for Team A in a league with teams A to Z goes like this:

• 1 - Team A
• 2 - Teams A-Z as a whole, aka the league
• 3 - Team Not A

I hope that's clear enough. I think it's fairly obvious that most people in the Flames organization, scouts to accountants, worry about the Flames most days, not the league. I do think that observers (media etc.) get confused about 2 & 3. Some other team is not the league. If Cal Nichols said that he doesn't care if the Predators survive in Nashville or not, the temptation is to label him as short-sighted or selfish. He may be both of those things, but it's worth considering if maybe he simply thinks the league would be just fine if the Predators had to move, or even that it'll be better off.

Also: there is the short-term, and the long-term. I'm literally the last person that would argue with Tom that people behave according to the incentives that exist, but I think he puts too much weight on the incentives that exist specific to this CBA.

The present CBA has an expiry date. The next one, and the one after that, will be different. Extremely different? I doubt it, but time will tell. Maybe some of the cost certainty elements will be watered down. Maybe some of the revenue-sharing provisions will be altered. I dunno. What I do know is that NHL owners have to plan for this in some way; they do have incentives to make decisions that will benefit the value of their businesses regardless of exactly what the next CBA says.

Steadfastly supporting a franchise that appears to have no chance of being profitable in their present location is not one of those things. Keeping a team from relocating into a market that will be extremely lucrative is not one of those things. Exercising an extreme amount of collective control over the fate of an individual franchise is not one of those things. And being indifferent -- or hostile -- to overall league revenue growth is not one of those things.

(And let's not forget: the next CBA will not drop out of the sky, it will be negotiated. If the league and owners spend the next 4 years trying to torque everything except Hockey Related Revenues, then the notion of the "partnership" will be in much bigger shambles than it is now, and it will considerably more difficult to negotiate a CBA with terms favourable to them.)

When I assess the short, medium, and long-term interests of NHL owners, each weighed as appropriately as I can figure, I think they must be in favour of the Balsillie bid for the Preds. It got denied this time, because Gary Bettman aggressively intervened (note: his interests are not identical to the owners'), and because Balsillie overplayed his hand (acting as if it was a done deal, instead of simply being clear about his intentions). Next time -- especially after all the owners have had time to reflect on this past bid -- Gary's veto is going to be overridden. Or at least, that's my prediction.

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Epilogue on Price:

Colby Cosh had a pretty good column a few weeks ago about Balsillie and the Predators, where he accurately described the consensus on the stunningly huge bid as "a swashbuckling gesture by an old collegiate sportsman." Cosh himself characterizes this as questionable; I agree, and then some.

Ballpark at least, I'm certain that Balsillie believes it to be a good investment at that price (subject to his relocation plans). I'll concede gladly that there might be an "I really want it!" premium included; there's also clearly a "No Hassles" premium in there to bolster his relocation plans. (I'd offer the analogy of a buyer adding $15k to an offer on a house in exchange for the current owners leaving in 15 days instead of 60, and throwing in the window coverings. It's not really "worth" $15k, but the buyer wants to get it done, move in, and not have to jack around with buying and installing new blinds.)

Even without knowing the exact magnitude of those "premiums" -- or understanding what considerations are included in the bid re: lease breakage, legal fees & penalties, etc. -- it would seem that Jim Balsillie is bidding over $200M for an NHL franchise with no real history, to move it to a market that, while rabid for hockey, has no arena.

In other words, there's no real mystery why Darryl Katz' bids for the Oilers (now up to $175M) have, in Cosh's phrase, "been greeted with stony silence". The Oilers have some Stanley Cups (5 is it?); Top 10 revenues; the legend of Gretzky and the Boys on the Bus; a recent playoff run that reinforced (with a sledgehammer) that love and demand for everything Oily is massive beyond quantifying; and an arena that, while not state-of-the-art, is jammed full every game and perfectly amenable until the day that the political climate is suitable for extracting much $$ from the taxpayers for a new one.

Katz is simply not offering near enough money. I have to laugh when Cal Nichols grunts that "we have no interest in selling". Ri-ight... is there an alternate universe where he could say, "We'd consider selling, but the club is worth A LOT more than what's being offered!"? Cause he'll never say it in this one.

There's one other notable element of the Cosh piece that goes to the main part of this post: the references to Craig Leopold's decision making ("..the second-best bid now apparently being preferred out of sheer pique by Predators owner Craig Leipold." and "Even after deliberately turning down the high bid for his asset,.."). What explains this decision to forsake $40-$50M? I doubt it's pique. A massive cash payment from MLSE for ridding them of a potential headache? I doubt that either. Personal affection for Mr Bettman, or Mr. Boots? Nah. It has to be the "No Hassles" premium, upside-down. He had to have been put under serious duress by Bettman: the league wasn't going to approve the sale, so he could either reject Balsillie's bid outright, or plan on spending months or years, and millions of dollars, in court. He "voluntarily" chose the former. Think the owners of the Thrashers and Panthers envied the position Bettman put Leopold in? Me neither, and as such I doubt it'll happen that way again.

Cripes, I need an editor.