Donald Fehr Should Help, Not Hurt, NHL Avoid Work Stoppage in 2012

When the NHL Players’ Association announced on Saturday that Donald Fehr would indeed be assuming the role as the union’s executive director, there was plenty of concern around the hockey world that the sport’s premier league could be headed to yet another devastating work stoppage.

After all, it was Fehr who was in charge of the Major League Baseball Players Association through much of its tumultuous history, including the strike that forced the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

Wouldn’t his arrival on the hockey scene spell doom for the hope of avoiding a third shutdown since 1994?

Not necessarily. Fehr’s ascension to the NHLPA’s top spot might actually make another labor stoppage less likely.

First of all, after that 1994 strike, baseball has enjoyed relative tranquility on the labor front. There hasn’t been another strike or lockout in the last 16 years, as the players and owners have found enough common ground to reach accord on new CBAs in 2002 and 2006. Those agreements came on Fehr’s watch, as he served as the MLBPA’s executive director from 1983-2009.

“After the strike in ’94, which ended when the owners were found to be violating federal law and bargaining in bad faith, which is what caused the strike to begin with, we reached an agreement,” said Fehr during a conference call on Saturday. “While that agreement has been tweaked a couple of times since then, it also has produced basically labor peace, if I can use that generalized term, since then.”

Even though Fehr is quick to blame the owners, the backlash from that 1994 strike has seemingly impacted Fehr. He certainly doesn’t seem eager to risk the devastating impact another work stoppage would have in hockey with the NHL still recovering from the owners’ lockout that wiped out the 2004-05 season.

And that brings us to the second point. While there is no doubt a legitimate fear of a work stoppage when the current CBA expires in September 2012, that threat comes less from the players than from the owners. It was the owners who locked out the players in both 1994-95 and 2004-05. And in 2012, it will be commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners he represents who will be the real threat to shut down the league again.

Even though the owners appeared to overwhelmingly win the last labor battle by implementing a hard salary cap, a 24 percent rollback of existing contracts and an escrow system to lock up a further percentage of player salaries, both the average salary and the cap ceiling have continued to rise dramatically since play resumed in the 2005-06 season.

Those increases have been triggered by the continued rise of league revenues, but the rising salaries are still putting pressure on the small-market teams that the cap was supposed to help, and the owners could be looking for even more concessions in the next round of negotiations.

Hard-line demands from the ownership side combined with a union in disarray after last year’s dismissal of former executive director Paul Kelly could have spelled doom for any agreement. But now that the players appear unified behind a strong and experienced leader in Fehr, the owners have to take them more seriously and be more amenable to reaching a fair compromise knowing the union is much less likely to cave if pushed to the brink of another stoppage.

And despite his reputation as a hard-liner, Fehr stressed that a stoppage is something he always seeks to avoid if at all possible.

“We treat a work stoppage, a strike, as a last resort,” Fehr said. “It’s something that you consider only when you believe that all alternatives have failed. We certainly hope, and I certainly believe, that the owners will treat it as a last resort on the other side, too. So if you would ask me, ‘Do I anticipate a stoppage?’ The answer is no, and I certainly don’t hope that we will have one.”

Both sides should also recognize the opportunity that the NHL could have in 2012. All three of the other major sports leagues have their CBAs set to expire before the NHL’s, and the NFL and NBA in particular appear poised for work stoppages next year. That would leave a golden opportunity for the NHL to regain a foothold with the casual sports fan and expand the league’s popularity to the benefit of both owners and players alike.

They can’t afford to squander that chance. And if the other sports resolve their issues and remain open for business, it will be even more imperative for the NHL to avoid another work stoppage that could drop hockey off the American sports map completely and cause damage the sport may never repair.

The addition of Fehr to hockey’s labor wars certainly isn’t a guarantee of future peace, but it’s also not a reason for immediate panic or to assume that another stoppage is suddenly a certainty.

Do you believe that Donald Fehr’s election as NHLPA executive director will lead to labor peace or another painful work stoppage? Share your thoughts below.