On what was scheduled to be the first day of the hockey season and next-to-last day of the baseball season, professional sports will rest today. Baseball is still shut down by a players' strike that today becomes the longest work stoppage in professional sports history, and yesterday the National Hockey League, against the wishes of its players, postponed the start of its season for at least two weeks.
Commissioner Gary Bettman of the N.H.L. announced yesterday that the season, scheduled to begin with 12 games tonight, would be delayed so the league and the players could continue negotiating a collective bargaining agreement.
Mr. Bettman said the league still hoped to play a full schedule of games, and targeted Oct. 15 as a new potential starting date. The commissioner denied that the league's action short-circuiting the new season constituted a lockout; he said he was simply postponing the start of the season.
But the head of the players' union, Bob Goodenow, said it was a "lockout, pure and simple." With the players ready to play and the owners not letting them, and the players not getting paid, the action has all the classic characteristics of a lockout.
This is the first time two major professional sports have been shut down at the same time. As if that trauma were not enough for fans in two countries, the National Basketball Association and its players do not have a new collective bargaining agreement, are waging their own dispute in the Federal court system and face a potential work-stopping confrontation when their season begins next month.
With only the National Football League operating, mainly on Sundays, following a labor dispute of its own that lasted six years, this promises to be an empty October for sports fans.
Innocent victims of a sports world consumed by fierce fights over player salaries, the fans won't see the World Series for the first time in 90 years, and they won't see the timely start of the hockey season only three and a half months after the New York Rangers' scintillating Stanley Cup championship climaxed what was probably the most successful season in N.H.L. history.
At a news conference at the New York Hilton, Mr. Bettman said: "I reject the notion that it is a lockout. It is a postponement because we could have our full season starting Oct. 15."
But the 75 games scheduled for tonight through Oct. 14 will not be played as scheduled, and the players will not begin earning their salaries tonight.
Further, players on four Canadian teams, those in the provinces of Ontario and Alberta, received lockout notices from their teams as is required under the provincial labor laws. However, the word "postponement" also appeared in the notices.
"It's an owners' lockout, pure and simple," Mr. Goodenow, the players' union leader, said in Toronto. Mr. Goodenow, however, said the players had agreed to continue negotiations. He said he would consult with union representatives today in Toronto before resuming the bargaining.
Mr. Bettman said the players were free to continue working out, but they said they would not.
"We're saying fine if the season is postponed, surely you can't expect us to come in and skate as if nothing happened," said Toronto's Mike Gartner, who is president of the players' association. "Something has happened. We've been locked out. That's a pretty serious thing to play under."
The action taken by Mr. Bettman and the owners of the league's 26 teams came in response to a union proposal made 24 hours earlier that the season proceed with a no-strike pledge from the players and a no-lockout pledge from the owners, while negotiations for a new labor agreement continued.
Mr. Bettman said the union's proposal was "particularly seductive." But he quickly explained that the league was deferring its decision on the idea because the owners are concerned "about the willingness of the players' association to negotiate."
In other words, the owners suspect that the players, who would be happy to play under the expired agreement, could plod along in the talks, and the two sides could reach the season's end without a new contract.
"Unless the players are prepared to negotiate a settlement," Mr. Bettman said, "simply agreeing to the no-strike pledge and playing for the year will only defer the inevitable and exacerbate the problem."
The commissioner, who in an impressive showing was supported by 28 owners and executives representing 20 teams, said the decision to open the season Oct. 15 would be based on the way talks proceed in the next two weeks. "We hope to be in a better position prior to Oct. 15, either to have a deal or know that there is substantial good-faith negotiations going on so that a deal is possible," Mr. Bettman said.
This is only the second work stoppage in N.H.L. history, but also the second in two-and-a-half years. The players struck for the first 10 days of April in 1992, though the missed games were made up.
The baseball strike, the eighth shutdown in that sport in 23 seasons, reached day No. 50 yesterday, matching the 50-day strike of 1981. Today it becomes the longest shutdown in professional sports history.
Mr. Bettman said yesterday the league planned to reschedule the missed 75 games throughout the remainder of the season and after the schedule is completed. Last season's playoffs ended June 14, and it's not likely that the league would want to stretch the post- season into July.
But Mr. Bettman also acknowledged that if the season doesn't start on Oct. 15, some games may be missed.
Because baseball has forsaken October, the N.H.L. had been expected to capitalize on the elimination of competing post- season games.
"We're very cognizant of a unique opportunity," Mr. Bettman said. "It's not just because baseball is not playing. It has to do with opportunities the sport has before it."
He referred to the increased interest in hockey, attested to by a five-year, $155 million television deal with the Fox network and soaring revenue from licensed merchandise. Mr. Bettman said the league's owners had to make "gut-wrenching decisions" after "these considerations were given a great deal of weight."
The Board of Governors, he said, concluded that "if this sport is to grow at all, it has to be on a solid foundation."
Although the owners talk of the need to create a revenue sharing pool for lower-revenue clubs -- which they say include 9 to 11 of the 26 franchises -- their primary concern is the escalation of player salaries. Mr. Bettman said salaries have tripled over the past four years, and over the past three years, "a collective profit has turned to a substantial collective loss."
To halt the escalation, the owners have proposed a tax system that would force teams to pay as much as a 20 percent tax on their payroll, depending on how far it goes beyond the league's average payroll. Under that system, the Rangers would have had to pay a levy of $3,965,000 on a payroll of $20,172,000 last season. That would have been the second highest levy in the league, behind Detroit's $4 million.
Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Buffalo would also have been assessed steep taxes, and the union contends that the proposal is intended to force those six teams and perhaps others to reduce their payrolls, thus limiting the salaries their players can receive.
Addressing the owners' stated revenue-sharing concerns, the union has proposed a 5.5 percent tax on the payrolls and gate receipts of the 16 clubs with the highest revenues. That system, the union projects, would produce about $40 million to be shared by the low-revenue teams.
But the owners don't want to share gate receipts, and they say the tax rate would not place enough "drag" on salaries.
Several of the owners who accompanied Mr. Bettman at the news conference spoke of what they saw as the importance of creating a new economic system.
