Trending Topics Extra: Let’s not worry about CBA talks

API am at peace with the idea of a lockout.

I should say first that I don't want a lockout to happen, obviously. But I honestly don't think there will even be one. And if there is one, I'm okay with it, because I don't think anyone is stupid enough to let it last for more than a few weeks.

The reason for my steadfast belief in this is simple. You can probably say a lot of things about the either side of the aisle in this tête-à-tête — they're greedy, they're power-hungry, they're looking only for what's fair, they're trying to increase their share of the pie — but one thing they're definitely not is stupid.

Yes, the owners' initial offer to the Players' Association was an insult and no grounds at all for any kind of labor peace but they also know what's ultimately at stake here. No one benefits from a lengthy lockout, or indeed, any amount of work stoppage because everyone is currently doing great.

The salary cap has pretty much exploded to nearly double its original post-lockout number, meaning that hockey-related revenues have done so as well. Hockey-related revenues also don't include a whole bunch of things that owners make money on as a result of running hockey teams. No one is getting clobbered here, as they were prior to the 2004-05 lockout, when the lack of a salary cap allowed big market teams to spend an insane amount of money on whatever players they wanted and small-market teams were left scratching in the dirt with the meager few talented players they drafted and not much else.

As Charles Pierce presciently pointed out a week or so ago, what the owners want more than anything is the ability to say they broke the players' backs in yet another collective bargaining agreement. Nothing more, nothing less.

That kind of pre-lockout inequity is, to an extent, rearing its head once again, though, and that could throw a lot of things into chaos. Ownership also seems not to be nearly as strong in its unity because the current revenue sharing system (hey! Revenue again!) can't begin to make sense for anyone involved except — you guessed it — the top teams, who simply know they're going to end up losing some amount to it. Your Maple Leafs, your Rangers, your Flyers, your Red Wings, your Bruins. These teams make boatloads of money and kick that down to a smaller number of teams that largely do not, and it probably won't surprise you to learn that it's a few of these richer teams' owners are reportedly the ones trying to bludgeon the NHLPA into taking that bad first deal they offered. Meanwhile, poorer teams are still left wondering what, exactly, becomes of their revenue sharing money.

Hawks in ownership aside, though, the Players' Association simply isn't the kind of mewling mess it was last time around. They came prepared to play hardball by taking up Donald Fehr on his "Shut up and let me handle this," proposal, and Fehr isn't a man to get bullied in labor negotiations. Arguably the strongest players' union in North American professional sports is that of Major League Baseball, and it's no coincidence that Fehr is largely the architect thereof. He's not going to get bullied by anyone sitting across from him. He is a bit of an old hand at this.

The NHLPA's counter-proposal is expected to come at some point this week as long as they can get a closer look at some teams' financials (and, by the time you read this, may have already done so). The simplest proposal is pretty clear: Stick with this basic CBA, at least for a little while. That's an option that some have hinted at being possible, and would give everyone a significant amount of time to work toward a more workable long-term solution. Again, no one's taking some sort of big hit under the current system — ask Shea Weber, Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, who all signed jumbo deals agreed to by actual small-market NHL owners — and therefore it must be doing something in a way that all sides find agreeable.

Now, it should be pointed out that lots of people think Weber locked in his massive contract, with its huge bonuses in the first two years, this summer so that he would not be at the mercy of whatever CBA is eventually agreed upon by next summer, when he would have been an unrestricted free agent. That shows a little bit of pessimism as far as a salary rollback is concerned, and possibly also that those owners didn't think they'd have to dole out nearly as much money as the initial contract stated. But nonetheless, this is huge money being tossed around, with huge commitments from players.

We know the current CBA works. It vindicates Bettman's plans for the league, and it's getting players both great and less so paid. I understand this is the National Hockey League we're talking about, but I'm going to say this next sentence anyway: Logic has to win out. Why blow everything up? Why risk that much uncertainty? There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and that's impossible to look past because this is a business.

But everyone is getting rich already. With a season at stake, or even part of one, allowing that to continue in lieu of another lamentable, counterproductive work stoppage, during which no one makes money, is extraordinarily sensible.

Maybe I'm asking too much in hoping that both the league and the union err on the side of reason and continual money-making, but I firmly believe that a bunch of businessmen can figure it out.

Ryan Lambert is a columnist for Puck Daddy. Follow him on Twitter or whatever.

Quick, fire Scott Howson before he screws something else up (Trending Topics Extra)

Getty ImagesThe long-awaited Rick Nash trade finally came down on Monday and it turned out that Scott Howson got a decent enough return for his face-of-the-franchise former Rocket Richard winner.

Of course, he was lambasted for it. Part of that is because it's really easy and kind of required by custom to trash anything he does. The simple fact is he managed an NHL team that had designs on making the playoffs for years to come — see what he gave up in the Jeff Carter trade and the ridiculous contract for James Wisniewski as evidence thereof — into the ground in just over a calendar year. No Jeff Carter, no Rick Nash, no hope of being good in the next few seasons.

The cries for his job that have been echoing around Columbus and in fact the entire league didn't get much quieter as a result of the four "ifs" he acquired for Nash. Granted, Howson was constrained significantly by Nash's ability to dictate the teams to which he could be dealt, but nonetheless, this was not a good day at the ballpark by the GM's own definition. He wanted a home run. He got a solid double to the gap that plated a pair.

But at the same time, Howson may have also built a fairly decent young roster that, while it probably won't be able to win much more than 30 or so games this season, could actually be half decent in a few years. Whether this was an accident is, one supposes, up for interpretation. Nonetheless, guys like Brandon Dubinsky, Cam Atkinson, Derick Brassard, Ryan Johansen, Artem Anisimov, Nikita Nikitin, Tim Erixon, Ryan Murray, David Savard, Jack Johnson, Allen York, and so forth are all decent enough players and all could, approximately, be called young. This isn't anything world-beating by any stretch of the imagination but it is, at least, something to start with.

And that's why they have to fire Scott Howson immediately.

There were a few reports after that whole disaster last season that Howson wouldn't be fired by Columbus' higher-ups, likely in the same way judges on courtroom dramas say "I want to see where he's going with this," as counsel goes spectacularly off the rails with a witness. Howson has somehow been given the chance to dig himself out from this mess he created all by himself, but it wouldn't be all that surprising to see him bash himself in the face with the shovel a few times before really getting after it in earnest.

Having colossally screwed even the slightest attempt at "going for it," to use Jay Feaster's favorite term, Howson can't have the keys going forward. Case in point: He got Los Angeles' first-round pick in 2013 along with Jack Johnson in exchange for Jeff Carter — not the best trade-off considering what he gave up just months earlier — but rumors over the weekend said he could be required to ship that back to the Kings if a trade for Jonathan Bernier were to come to fruition.

This is, of course, after saying that he was content to enter the season with Steve Mason and Sergei Bobrovsky as his goaltenders. That in itself shows he has a complete lack of judgment on the subject of what is an acceptable goaltending tandem, as if last year's faith in Mason wasn't enough evidence. But to then throw away a pick on an unproven netminder like Bernier, whose even-strength save percentage last season was an appalling .901 (worse than Jonas Gustavsson's) on an appreciably better team.

In no way should this man be allowed to oversee a worst-in-the-league team's efforts at even a modest rebuild. He's been running the Blue Jackets since 2007, when Doug MacLean got the axe, and in that time made the postseason with a team he largely inherited thanks to a freakishly good and as-it-turns-out uncharacteristic start from Mason, then a rookie. Since then, well, it hasn't gone well. Five fifth-place finishes in a division that is, admittedly, not easy to win against. But more to the point, has gotten actively worse in that time.

What's more, prior to this latest draft, Hockey's Future had the Blue Jackets' system ranked a stunning 29th out of 30, ahead of only the San Jose Sharks. Of course, that's probably because the latter team picked in the top 15 just once since 2006, thanks to all that winning they've been doing. Columbus, well, their best season in that time (okay, ever) saw them earn a whopping 92 points.

Repeatedly awful team? Bad drafting? Howson is, to put it nicely, demonstrably bad at his job. This was his chance to make up ground against those who would nay-say his efforts, which is to say "everyone."

He turned down Rangers offers at the deadline and draft that were arguably better than the one he eventually settled for (the sticking point being whether you prefer Artem Anisimov to a pair of prospects) and took on money to offload his franchise's only good player ever. This after basically asking for the moon in all negotiations, which he was more than happy to make extraordinarily public. No one would think he got ripped off in the Nash deal if he hadn't done that, and even when the Rangers were desperate to get the star winger over fears that Shea Weber could be smothering their forwards for the next 14 years, he failed to command any kind of better return.

There's simply no clear indication of the plan Howson has in mind. He's clearly happy to roll a top-six next season of R.J. Umberger, Brassard, Atkinson, Vinny Prospal, Anisimov and Dubinsky. That is, somehow, a worse top-six than Calgary rolled last year, and the Flames actually had a good goaltender behind them. His insistence on obtaining NHL talent — hence his decision to nix the earlier Ranger offers — seems ill-founded.

That's the reason you can't let him clean up his own mess. It's impossible to guess either if or when he'll trade one of his team's few decent prospects and a lottery pick for Ales Hemsky, but really, do you want to take that chance? Worse things have already happened.

Ryan Lambert is a columnist for Puck Daddy. Follow him on Twitter or whatever.

Trending Topics Extra: Let’s not worry about CBA talks

API am at peace with the idea of a lockout.

I should say first that I don't want a lockout to happen, obviously. But I honestly don't think there will even be one. And if there is one, I'm okay with it, because I don't think anyone is stupid enough to let it last for more than a few weeks.

The reason for my steadfast belief in this is simple. You can probably say a lot of things about the either side of the aisle in this tête-à-tête — they're greedy, they're power-hungry, they're looking only for what's fair, they're trying to increase their share of the pie — but one thing they're definitely not is stupid.

Yes, the owners' initial offer to the Players' Association was an insult and no grounds at all for any kind of labor peace but they also know what's ultimately at stake here. No one benefits from a lengthy lockout, or indeed, any amount of work stoppage because everyone is currently doing great.

The salary cap has pretty much exploded to nearly double its original post-lockout number, meaning that hockey-related revenues have done so as well. Hockey-related revenues also don't include a whole bunch of things that owners make money on as a result of running hockey teams. No one is getting clobbered here, as they were prior to the 2004-05 lockout, when the lack of a salary cap allowed big market teams to spend an insane amount of money on whatever players they wanted and small-market teams were left scratching in the dirt with the meager few talented players they drafted and not much else.

As Charles Pierce presciently pointed out a week or so ago, what the owners want more than anything is the ability to say they broke the players' backs in yet another collective bargaining agreement. Nothing more, nothing less.

That kind of pre-lockout inequity is, to an extent, rearing its head once again, though, and that could throw a lot of things into chaos. Ownership also seems not to be nearly as strong in its unity because the current revenue sharing system (hey! Revenue again!) can't begin to make sense for anyone involved except — you guessed it — the top teams, who simply know they're going to end up losing some amount to it. Your Maple Leafs, your Rangers, your Flyers, your Red Wings, your Bruins. These teams make boatloads of money and kick that down to a smaller number of teams that largely do not, and it probably won't surprise you to learn that it's a few of these richer teams' owners are reportedly the ones trying to bludgeon the NHLPA into taking that bad first deal they offered. Meanwhile, poorer teams are still left wondering what, exactly, becomes of their revenue sharing money.

Hawks in ownership aside, though, the Players' Association simply isn't the kind of mewling mess it was last time around. They came prepared to play hardball by taking up Donald Fehr on his "Shut up and let me handle this," proposal, and Fehr isn't a man to get bullied in labor negotiations. Arguably the strongest players' union in North American professional sports is that of Major League Baseball, and it's no coincidence that Fehr is largely the architect thereof. He's not going to get bullied by anyone sitting across from him. He is a bit of an old hand at this.

The NHLPA's counter-proposal is expected to come at some point this week as long as they can get a closer look at some teams' financials (and, by the time you read this, may have already done so). The simplest proposal is pretty clear: Stick with this basic CBA, at least for a little while. That's an option that some have hinted at being possible, and would give everyone a significant amount of time to work toward a more workable long-term solution. Again, no one's taking some sort of big hit under the current system — ask Shea Weber, Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, who all signed jumbo deals agreed to by actual small-market NHL owners — and therefore it must be doing something in a way that all sides find agreeable.

Now, it should be pointed out that lots of people think Weber locked in his massive contract, with its huge bonuses in the first two years, this summer so that he would not be at the mercy of whatever CBA is eventually agreed upon by next summer, when he would have been an unrestricted free agent. That shows a little bit of pessimism as far as a salary rollback is concerned, and possibly also that those owners didn't think they'd have to dole out nearly as much money as the initial contract stated. But nonetheless, this is huge money being tossed around, with huge commitments from players.

We know the current CBA works. It vindicates Bettman's plans for the league, and it's getting players both great and less so paid. I understand this is the National Hockey League we're talking about, but I'm going to say this next sentence anyway: Logic has to win out. Why blow everything up? Why risk that much uncertainty? There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake and that's impossible to look past because this is a business.

But everyone is getting rich already. With a season at stake, or even part of one, allowing that to continue in lieu of another lamentable, counterproductive work stoppage, during which no one makes money, is extraordinarily sensible.

Maybe I'm asking too much in hoping that both the league and the union err on the side of reason and continual money-making, but I firmly believe that a bunch of businessmen can figure it out.

Ryan Lambert is a columnist for Puck Daddy. Follow him on Twitter or whatever.