Count me with the 21 per cent of Canadians who blame owners, not the 52 per cent who say it’s the players’ fault.

Also exclude me from those who sneer that it’s about money, full stop, like Damien Cox in the Toronto Star: “This is not a fight between poor people ….. It’s about avarice.”

I don’t think the fact both sides are rich means issues of right and wrong do not arise. Sheer avarice is rare. Even rich people feel a need to be justified. This is about fairness between rich guys.

Since the owners’ views seem to have wide sympathy, let me suggest how things might look to a player, his face, say, mashed against the plexiglass, as he squints up at the boxes. I know what I get paid for, although whether I’m overpaid is another question. But what do the owners do? Why are they needed at all?

Take the Leafs. Their big owners are a bank and a teachers’ pension fund. Not even actual teachers, who might bring a hockey-loving element, but fund managers legally forbidden to consider anything except maximizing profits. What would be lost if you eliminated that tranche?

You’d still have players, GMs, coaches, scouts, the guys who drive Zambonis. The revenue to cover their costs would still flow in at the same level. You could still borrow to build new arenas etc. based on those assets and revenue projections.

But you’d lose the need to siphon profits to owners, and a big source of the conflict that led to this impasse: player suspicions that owners are hiding their profits while poor-mouthing. The sums available would be clear.

You’d still need to negotiate their distribution among the parties, but without the galling claims of people who contribute zero hockeywise. NHL owners’ mouthpiece Gary Bettman perfectly embodies this group. He has no hockey background, unlike players’ union head Bob Goodenow, and it shows.

This week he said the players, “to use a hockey term ….. are instigating a fight.” Actually, in hockey circles, you don’t need to say you’re using hockey terms, you just use them. And all you need to say is “instigating,” as anyone who ever watched a game knows. But I admit I don’t warm to the guy.

Two caveats:

  • The “best” owners are widely considered those who are also fans, but they are often more interested in winning than profiting and frequently use their other enterprises to subsidize their teams. It’s the pure corporate types who focus narrowly on profits.
  • I know there is an economic “system” we live under. But other models exist within it, like non-profit, community-owned CFL football teams; or excellent newspapers, like Le Devoir and Le Monde, that are run as co-ops. It’s precisely in areas like sports and journalism, which inspire greater social identification than banks or burger chains, that such alternate models seem to thrive.

The Weir ‘fold’: Speaking with The Globe and Mail‘s Lorne Rubenstein, Mike Weir was eloquent about pressures he felt on the last day of the Canadian Open: “It’s a totally different thing ….. than any player faces on tour at any tournament. ….. You hear, ‘Go Tiger, go’ on tour, not ‘Go USA.’ It was like a hockey game out there.”

I’d add it’s also a totally different thing our hockey players face compared to others, and that goes for our poets, artists etc., too. You’d be amazed how many writers feel burdened not just by wanting to write well, but also to prove that Canada exists, or is up to scratch.

This can happen in a society lacking traditional markers of national self-esteem: a unique language, a mythicized history, heroic forebears, a literary canon. In their absence, the need to prove national self-worth falls more heavily on individuals or on institutions like hockey and health care.

Wayne Gretzky was also eloquent on the Weir “collapse,” gently noting there’s “a fine line in sports” between winning and losing. His point extends to life (which is one reason many of us find sports compelling, and will miss hockey).

You can fail to fold, and still lose; or cave, and still win. Think of the proudest achievements or elements in your life and how easily they might not have been. It’s all so chancy and scary.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.