Vancouver Canucks' Kevin Bieksa senses fan support for players during lockout

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1 Vancouver Canucks' Kevin Bieksa senses fan support for players during lockout 'People are informed and they know what is going on here. They know it is a $3-billion business, they know the owners had record revenues last year' By Brad Ziemer, Vancouver Sun September 18, :27 AM VANCOUVER It s hardly a scientific poll, but Kevin Bieksa senses that this time things are different. The feedback he has been receiving in these very early days of the National Hockey League lockout at the coffee shops he frequents, from the fans he meets on the streets and the messages he gets on his Twitter account has been largely positive and Bieksa feels support for the players. Lots of it. I think 75 per cent of the fans have been very supportive, the Canucks defenceman said Monday after skating with some of his teammates at UBC. I have been getting a lot of messages saying we support you guys, the players. There is a lot of information out there this time, it s not like the last lockout where unless you were really paying attention you didn t know what was going on. Now there is a lot of information out there. There are stats, numbers are being thrown around, people are informed and they know what is going on here. They know it is a $3-billion business, they know the owners had record revenues last year. Just look at the numbers, like I said, the dedicated fans, 75 per cent of them, are behind us. Unfortunately, that and about $4 will buy you a latte at Starbucks. It s not likely to influence NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the 29 team owners who despite a summer-long spending spree are now pleading poverty. But Bieksa thinks the fans, most of them anyway, are beginning to see through the hypocrisy of the owners, who spent upwards of $200 million on beat-the-clock deals in the days leading up to this weekend s lockout. It s ridiculous and I think everybody sees that, Bieksa said. If you don t see that, you are blind. Obviously, the problem is with them, the problem isn t with us making too much. It s

2 them overpaying guys and creating their own problems so to speak. They could fix themselves without asking for rollbacks or concessions from us. Disappointment and frustration were the words used to describe the emotions of the Canucks who skated Monday for the first time since the lockout took effect at midnight eastern time on Saturday night. I m not angry, it s just that a lot of these owners are giving guys new contracts left and right and telling you that you are worth every penny and they want you there and (now) they want 20 per cent of it back, said goalie Cory Schneider. It s a little contradictory and it is hard to take them at their word when they say things and a month later they don t mean it any more. It s tough for us. The players have spent the past weeks hoping for the best, but fearing the worst. They saw the lockout coming and had considerable time to prepare for it. Still, when it officially happened it was like a kick in the gut. It s not a good feeling, Bieksa said. Most of us knew this would probably happen. Right now, we re in limbo, we re coming to the rink, we re skating, we re training, but it s not the same feeling. We should be in training camp, fall is coming, the weather has been great, which helps, but once it starts raining and stuff it s going to feel a little bit weird. The only thing we can do is keep our bodies ready right now and once we get a deal done things are going to happen quickly, so we have to be ready to go. And when might a deal get done? Bieksa suggested that s the million-dollar or perhaps we should say $3.3 billion question. That is what the fans ask every day on the street, he said. When s it going to end, what do you think. It s tough to get one guys opinion because you don t know how the NHL is going to react to our next proposal, you don t know how we are going to react to their next one. It could change daily so right now it s not fair to predict. But in the back of everyone s mind even players like Bieksa and Schneider who weren t directly affected by it is the season which was lost in its entirety to a lockout. It wouldn t be fair to a lot of people, Bieksa, who played in the AHL during the last lockout, said of the prospect of losing another season. It wouldn t be fair to the fans, I d feel for a lot of people who work in the arenas, the vendors, employees, the (Canucks) staff that have all taken pay cuts. It sucks for a lot of people. Obviously, the owners want to make a little more money, but it s not just the players they are coming after. They think we make too much and they think we could probably weather the storm, but there are a lot of other people who are suffering that maybe they are not considering.

3 Schneider, one of the Canuck player reps in negotiations, hopes the frustration he senses from fans will help convince both sides to reach an agreement. The fans are frustrated and rightfully so, Schneider said. They want to watch hockey just as badly as we want to play hockey... there s that sense of here we go again. We went through this a few years ago and fans went through a lot by losing hockey that year. I think a lot of them are fed up. They are tired of every seven or eight years there is no hockey to start the year. They speak loudest, they are the ones who shell out their hard-earned money to come and watch us and pay our salaries and we would love to be out there playing for them doing what we do. But I think for us to not have an agreement yet speaks volumes to what we believe and how strongly we feel about the quality of the owners proposal. The fact we are not accepting it should tell you everything. Vancouver Canucks players make a statement by flipping their practice jerseys Notebook: NHLers show solidarity during informal workout VANCOUVER We are all Canucks. Except for the 11 guys who skated Monday at UBC s Father Bauer Arena. In their first skate since the National Hockey League lockout took effect on the weekend, the players made a point by turning their Canuck practice jerseys inside out. I don t know who the first guy to do it was, but we re no longer employed by the Canucks so we re not going to be representing them, said defenceman Kevin Bieksa. It s not a big deal. I think somebody actually said they preferred that we had it inside out. I don t care either way. Still got the Canucks (logo) on the pants and the helmet. Who really cares. The Canuck regulars who skated Monday included Bieksa, Dan Hamhuis, Cory Schneider, Maxim Lapierre and Daniel and Henrik Sedin. I m not sure whose decision it was, but I mean, it makes sense, Schneider said of the jersey reversal. WAITING GAME: A number of NHL players have already signed with European teams, but most of the Canucks seem to be taking a wait-and-see attitude about chasing overseas employment. I think it s too early to talk about that, Bieksa said. It s in the back of everybody s mind, I think. I don t think too many people want to miss an entire season of hockey. We are going to be doing this (working out in Vancouver) for a few weeks and see how talks go and I guess in a month or two we ll make our minds as far as that is concerned.

4 By that time, of course, it might be tough to find a job in Europe. Obviously things are going to be pretty clogged up, Bieksa said. You are looking at 750 players looking for a job and then you have all the guys who have been overseas for a while that have contracts and then there s the import rule and all that. There s a lot of factors, it s complicated. Hopefully it doesn t get to that point. HEADING HOME?: Danish reports on Monday indicated winger Jannik Hansen is contemplating signing to play in Denmark during the lockout. Hansen s former team, the Rødovre Mighty Bulls, have put out feelers to Hansen, who wants to wait awhile before committing to a deal. I m a little reluctant to go home to play for a month or three weeks, he told Danish media. I will wait a little and hopefully soon get a little clarity. Because if this is short, then there is no reason to go home and play. But if it is a whole season, I will of course play. ESCROW EXCITEMENT: If the lockout delays the start of the regular season, the players will miss their first pay cheques in mid-october. But they won t be starving. At about exactly that time they are scheduled to receive their escrow cheques from the NHL. Last season, the players had 8.5 per cent of their salaries put into escrow. But with record league revenues, they are getting almost all of it back in mid- to late October. That means Cory Schneider won t have do something he joked about on Monday. Might go work at a gas station for a little bit if that s allowed, but I think my (Canadian) work permit says I have to play hockey only, he said. Based on his $900,000 US salary last season, Schneider s escrow cheque next month should amount to about $72,000 before taxes. NO. 1 and ONLY GOALIE: Roberto Luongo returned to his Florida home on the weekend and Eddie Lack is in Chicago preparing for the start of the Wolves AHL training camp. So that leaves Schneider as the only goalie participating in this week s informal workouts. This probably isn t what Schneider had in mind when he became the team s No. 1 goalie. The hard thing being a goalie is that it s hard to duck out or leave early, he said with a smile. I think we ll probably see if anyone else is around who wants to come skate, but I don t mind it right now. ICE CHIPS: The players have to pay for the ice they are using at UBC and also must launder their own jerseys... Former Canuck and current L.A. King Willie Mitchell skated at UBC on Monday.

5 Canucks players criticize hypocrisy of NHL owners' spending spree You don t pile up nearly $200 million in contracts in a couple days without players noticing a hint of hypocrisy. The NHL s version of Black Friday, a spending spree to beat the expiring CBA, isn t going to help the owners make their case at the bargaining table. In two days over the weekend, NHL teams went wild, desperately trying to sign players under the rules of the concluded CBA, the one they claim can t work moving forward. It was ridiculous, Canucks defenceman Kevin Bieksa said. I think everyone sees that. If you don t see that, you re blind. The problem isn t with us making too much, it s with them overpaying guys and creating their own problems. They can fix themselves without asking for rollbacks and concessions from us. The owners defence? They just can t help themselves. It s a little counterintuitive, Canucks goalie Cory Schneider said. Save us from ourselves, is what they said. They said they re too competitive and they want to win so badly, these are the deals that are happening, So, we have to create a system that won t allow them to do that. A lot of these owners are giving guys new contracts left and right, telling you how much you re worth down to every single cent and penny. And then, all of a sudden, they want 20 per cent of it back. It s a little contradictory to us. It s hard to take them at their word when they say things and a month later, they don t mean it any more. It s tough for us. Captain Henrik Sedin said: They got everything they wanted last time around and they keep signing guys to year deals. The next day they are sitting at the table negotiating with us, talking about other things. I think that s a big problem in all of this. A small group of Canucks will continue to skate in Vancouver during the lockout. The group on Monday included Dan Hamhuis, Bieksa, the Sedin twins, Schneider, Maxim Lapierre and Jordan

6 Schroeder. On Monday, Day 2 of the lockout, they wore their Canucks practice jerseys but inside out. I m not sure whose decision it was but it makes sense, Schneider said. None of the Canucks said they are planning to play in Europe, though the Sedins said they will take it week by week. Henrik said he believes the Swedish Elite League will reverse a position that for now only allows NHL players in the league if they commit for the entire year. I can t see them sticking with that decision, Henrik said. It s against the rules back in Sweden that they are not allowing teams to sign players to short-term contracts. It s a big thing back home right now. Playing in Europe is a notion Bieksa has wrestled with. I think everyone has at least thought about it, Bieksa said. For sure, it s in the back of your mind. You don t want to miss an entire season of hockey. I don t think it s something I will run to right away. The lockout dispute whittles down to a fight over how to split revenue. The players now get 57 per cent. The owners would love that to be significantly less. There s no action, Schneider said. We feel we ve made them creative offers that offer substantial concessions to what we ve been earning. They ve deemed it not good enough. They re waiting for what else we got. We re trying to be creative, trying to come up with solutions that solve the problems, not just move by a per cent or half a per cent every time we negotiate (which would allow them) to just sit back and wait. From Schneider s perspective, the NHLPA has already lost. That s the problem with this whole thing, it doesn t matter who is right in the end, or who thinks they re right, Schneider said. It just matters what people think is going to get this done. We can say we re right until we re blue in the face, and we may well be, but it doesn t matter. They ve already won so far. We re going to make less than our proposals we ve presented so far. We re going to take a pay cut from what we made before, so they already have won. It s just a matter of how much they want to win versus how much they are willing to say, All right, let s get the game going.

7 Vancouver players stand defiantly during lockout DAVID EBNER VANCOUVER The Globe and Mail Published Monday, Sep , 10:21 PM EDT Last updated Monday, Sep , 10:23 PM EDT The tone on the ice was jovial. Eleven locked-out NHL players, mostly Vancouver Canucks, wearing their team jerseys inside out, at the University of British Columbia. Ten skaters, one goaltender, Cory Schneider. Among the drills and games at a light, informal practice on Monday were a series of scrimmages, 2-on-2s, 3-on-3s, and even 5-on-5. At one juncture, Schneider was on his back and pulled off some sort of folded upside-down double-stack of his pads to fend off a Henrik Sedin shot. There were a lot of smiles, hooting and hollering, even a moonwalk-like goal celebration on skates: men playing a boy s game. Off the ice, the tone was cold. You could tell it was cold on a sunny and warm mid-september Monday in Vancouver. The inside-out jerseys were just one sign that the star employees of the Canucks had been locked out by their owner, Francesco Aquilini. Replacement jerseys from the National Hockey League Players Association practices will continue this week are on the way. In this collective bargaining limbo, after the imposed Sept. 15 deadline and before the Sept. 21 scheduled opening of training camp, nothing was said on Monday that people haven t heard before. Schneider, a team representative on the players association bargaining committee, said nothing had been scheduled. The 26-year-old lone goaltender Roberto Luongo flew home to Florida last Saturday was defiant, and pragmatic. For us not to have an agreement yet speaks volumes to what we believe and how strongly we feel about the quality of the owners proposal, Schneider said on Day 2 of the lockout. The fact that we re not accepting it should tell you everything. Schneider, however, knows that the owners have already won, starting with their low opening offer of 43 per cent of revenue for players, down from the previous 57. Many observers feel is fair, even if means a large pay cut for players (again).

8 They ve already won so far, Schneider said of the owners. We re going to take a pay cut from what we ve made before. So, they already have won, it s just a matter how much they want to win versus how much everyone s willing to say, All right, let s get the game going. Defenceman Kevin Bieska scoffed at as a fair split of revenues, arguing the NHL is not comparable to football or basketball, given the much greater revenues in those sports especially from television. Fifty-fifty to the educated person doesn t mean anything, Bieksa said. It s 50 per cent of what. People say why can t you be more like football or basketball.... You can t even compare it. We ll take 50-50, for sure, put more into the pie, and we ll take Bieksa said he felt the strong majority of fans stand behind the players. People are informed, and they know what s really going on here. They know it s a $3-billion business, and they know the owners had record revenues last year. You just look at the numbers. For the most part, the educated fan, 75 per cent of them, are behind us. Bieksa also swung at the mad rush of $200-million-plus contracts in the dying days of the expired collective bargaining agreement (CBA). It s ridiculous, and I think everybody sees that. If you don t see that, you re blind. The problem isn t with us, making too much, it s them overpaying guys and creating their own problems. The informal Canucks practices will go on this week. No player indicated an immediate jump to Europe. For Schneider, he said the larger international ice surface would be an adjustment, an unnecessary one if the NHL starts soon. The Sedins might consider Sweden, eventually. Jannik Hansen, not at UBC on Monday, was rumoured to be mulling a return to his homeland, Denmark., of which in an Internet report (through Google translate) Hansen described as not entirely impossible. As for the new contracts late last week and Schneider just signed one less than three months ago the goaltender said: It s just that a lot of owners are giving guys new contracts left and right and telling you how much you re worth, and that they want you there, then all of a sudden they want 20 per cent of it back. It s hard to take them at their word, when they say things and a month later they don t mean it any more, so it s just a contrast. A compromise, of some sort, eventually, awaits. I m sure both sides won t be happy with whatever the agreement is, Schneider said. And some times that s how negotiations work. Schneider: In every proposal, NHLPA has given more

9 TSN.ca Staff 9/17/2012 9:51:11 PM The ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations between the National Hockey League and the NHL Players' Association are starting to stir up familiar feelings for Mathieu Schneider. Schneider who was active through both the and NHL lockouts as a player says the players are frustrated by the prospect of the current work stoppage resulting in game cancellations. This time around, he is representing the players as Special Assistant to NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr. "The fact that we're sitting here in this position once again, of course, it's frustrating for the players," Schneider told TSN on Monday. The Players' Association has yet to table a counter-proposal to the league's latest CBA offer, which the NHL filed on Sept. 12. The league voted unanimously to lock out the players the next day while both sides continued discussions. "In each proposal that we've brought forward, we have moved," Schneider said. "We're the only ones that have been giving in this entire negotiation. Everything that they have put forward takes more from the players; on the contracting issues, on the straight share of the revenue and that's the frustrating part for the players. Our next offer will be giving more back to the owners, they're next offer will be taking more from the players." One of the issues in negotiations thus far has been the division of hockey-related revenues. With early proposals from the league believed to have redefined hockey-related revenue, the most recent is believed to operate on the terminology used in the existing CBA. "We started off with them asking for $450 million per year and now they're at $330 million per year," Schneider says. "My question is: what are we supposed to do in this situation?" While the players have stated they understand that reaching a deal may require concessions in terms of clubs' salary commitments, the PA has been vocal about its refusal to accept an immediate rollback similar to the one conceded at the start of the previous CBA in "We're giving the owners an opportunity to grow themselves out of their problems," Schneider said in reference to the PA's proposals to date. "We want them to recognize what we've put on the table. Over the next five years, our last offer could give them over $1 billion in concessions if they grow the game. For them to dismiss the seven per cent growth rate, I think, is a little ridiculous." Schneider did directly address the PA's recent campaign dubbing the current situation an "NHL Owners Lockout".

10 "What happened during the last lockout was the players took a lot of the heat," Schneider said of the labour stoppage that resulted in the cancellation of the season. Those negotiations largely centred around the decision to implement a salary cap. "This is a decision by the owners to lock out the players," he said. "The players wanted to keep playing. There was never mention of the players going on strike and we wanted the fans to know that, essentially, we were all fans growing up playing this game, probably the biggest fans." Schneider believes the concessions made to reach the previous deal were in part what has led to the existing problems in negotiations. "We've had record revenues, record growth of the game, record attendance," Schneider said, "and still we're sitting here today in a system that the owners designed." "We don't want to be sitting here going through this again in four years, which is where we think we'll be operating under the current system."