In theory, what happens in the baseball talks has no more effect on hockey than a Greg Maddux fastball does on deciding the Stanley Cup.
But the reality is something different."The negotiations seem to be proceeding along a parallel," Buffalo Sabres vice president Gerry Meehan said Friday. "It's instructive to see how the baseball talks proceed."
Although the baseball and hockey talks involve different people meeting in different places and crunching different numbers, the issue in both sports is the same: Owners want some sort of salary cap, and players vow never to accept one.
Both leagues shut down for part of 1994 because of the labor strife and both work stoppages threaten to spoil '95, too. Baseball owners declared an impasse Friday and implemented a salary cap; hockey is fast approaching the point where the entire season would have to be canceled.
"We definitely look at what happens in baseball," Sabres forward Dave Hannan said. "But it just makes us say, `Let's not let it get that far.' "
And it's not just hockey and baseball.
When the NBA got a salary cap, the NFL also wanted one. When football players grew dissatisfied with their deal, they sent the word to their hockey- and baseball-playing brethren:
"I'd tell them to stick to their guns on the cap issue," Philadelphia Eagles defensive end William Fuller said in September. "You give up now and it will be tough to recoup that ground in the future."
Hannan said he heard the same thing from friends on the Buffalo Bills.
"We understand that a lot of the football players are unhappy," he said. "And we understand why."
Comments like those made the rounds at the October union meeting. "I think that reinforced the problems there are with the salary cap," NHL Players Association spokesman Steve MacAllister said.
Meehan said it might not be appropriate for hockey players to compare their fortunes to football or baseball players because hockey doesn't have the same revenues as football and baseball.
"They don't see themselves as superstar hockey players, they see themselves as superstar athletes in the world of sports," Meehan said. That's why the NHL needs cost controls that keep salaries in line with its revenues, he said.