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Sunday, January 12, 2003

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Michael Peca, the Islanders' captain and one of the game's most respected leaders, makes a point of keeping his focus squarely on his job and his team. But he also will allow that he is no different than many players in keeping tabs on the off-ice turmoil that has enveloped the franchises in Buffalo and Ottawa.

He is especially close to the Sabres' situation, regularly talking with his former teammates in the organization.

"I feel bad for the players there," Peca said Tuesday at Nassau Coliseum, a few hours before facing off against the Penguins. "They're in a situation where their families don't know where they're going to live next year, what's going to happen with the team. I know you've got to worry about what's going on out on the ice, but we're also talking about people's livelihoods, issues like where their kids will be going to school. You're worried about the fans and the city, too. The sooner this is resolved, the better."

Where the NHL's players are concerned, that is more true of the long term than the short.

For the moment, they are unlikely to be inconvenienced much, other than having to field business-related questions from reporters that they are mightily unequipped to answer. And given that the average salary is $1.6 million, such a triviality will elicit little public sympathy.

By the summer of 2004, though, players should anticipate paying a heavy price for the Sabres' and Senators' mess.

That is when the NHL's Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NHL Players Association expires, and that is when owners are expected to form a united, hard front to get a salary cap. Or, as Commissioner Gary Bettman euphemestically calls it, "cost certainty."

Be sure that there is no glee in New York headquarters over having to spend millions of dollars and countless hours attempting to bail out the Sabres and Senators. But be equally sure that NHL officials are licking their lips at having not one but two concrete examples of why their financial structure needs to be changed across the board.

Never mind that many other factors led to the collapses of these teams, not the least of which was poor management. In Ottawa, ownership unwisely sunk its own money into building the Corel Centre and even an adjacent highway ramp rather than moving the team to a city which would offer financial assistance. In Buffalo, ownership was guilty of criminal conduct, as evidenced by John Rigas' being arrested on fraud charges last year and paraded away in handcuffs.

Still, none of that will stop Bettman from approaching Bob Goodenow, the NHLPA's chief, and citing these teams as glaring examples of why the league needs to limit players' salaries. He will say that a tighter system might have allowed the Sabres and Senators to stay solvent. He will say that a league with better parity would draw more fans as a whole and, thus, more revenue to such struggling franchises.

Most important, right or wrong, Bettman is sure to have public opinion behind him. Rare is the fan who favors seeing one city lose its team to another. Rarer still is the fan who favors having five of 30 teams dominate the free-agency spending each summer.

Even the players might buy into the concept that the game needs to be changed, albeit not to the draconian extent the owners will seek.

Peca was asked if he felt the Buffalo and Ottawa situations were extreme examples which should be dismissed from discussion when the new CBA talks begin.

"Tough to say," he replied. "Around the time of the last Collective Bargaining Agreement, Quebec and Winnipeg, which were great hockey cities, lost their teams. But they were really resurrected in Colorado and Phoenix, too. I mean, you don't want to keep seeing teams move, even when you know they could probably be more successful somewhere else, but ... I guess that's why we have a lot of work ahead of us to get ready for 2004. We all need to see what we can do to make this game great for everybody."