Does NHL have something to Fehr?

Hockey Betting Lines

08/30/2010 - Toronto, Canada (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The revolving door to the president's office at the National Hockey League Players' Association is once again in motion and the punditocracy is foaming with rumors that former baseball players' union boss Don Fehr will soon be shuttling into the wood-paneled inner sanctum.

Fehr has been acting as an unpaid adviser to the NHLPA for about a year after fighting baseball owners for 26 years - an often tumultuous tenure that included five collective bargaining agreements and one strike, in 1994 (for which Montreal Expos fans will never forgive the union).

Fehr can be as hard-line about not having a salary cap as Stephen Harper is on scrapping the long-form census. The New York Yankees 2010 payroll is $206.3 million. We're not sure what the Prime Minister's salary is since all stats are just a bunch of damn lies, anyway.

But back to pucks.

It seems the NHLPA, if it hires Fehr as its new president, is signaling that it is spoiling for a fight. I think the union should think twice before dropping the gloves with owners again.

First, players haven't exactly had to hold bake sales to pay their bills following the introduction of the salary cap before the 2005-06 season. In fact, the salary floor for this season is more than the salary cap of a few years ago, based on increased league revenues, but it may not be an ever- expanding pie.

After all, there was a worldwide financial meltdown between the last collective bargaining agreement, in July 2005, and its expiration date, in September 2012.

We're still recovering from one recession and, if U.S. housing foreclosure and unemployment stats are any indicator - patience, Mr. Harper! - we could be lurching toward another. It's the new normal and it's not pretty, especially if you're in a business that relies on consumers with discretionary spending money.

Sure, there are some Flyers fans who will forgo rent in order to buy tickets, but that's not the rule. With the exception of Toronto, where people eagerly surrender their wallets, credit cards and ATM PINs in exchange for an inferior product, those with less discretionary spending may cut back on luxuries like professional hockey.

With a salary cap already in place and the owners not about to surrender it, the hiring of Fehr, if it happens, will be an ideological move to fight over a few million here and a few million there, the pro sports equivalent of table scraps.

Sometimes, timing is everything and, if you support the NHLPA, the time to hire Fehr would have been in 2005, before the owners watched the players cave to the cap.

Bizarrely, whoever is the next president may find him/herself in the odd position of helping owners circumvent the CBA.

We're thinking here of the Ilya Kovalchuk case. The league rejected the 17- year, $102-million pact as a way of getting around the salary cap by amortizing the annual cap hit over a long period. The owners want the best labor for the cheapest price, so they did some creative math. The union wants job security for its members and didn't put up a whisper of protest against the Kovalchuk deal. If the Kovalchuk deal would have stood and thereby lowered average annual salaries in the process, shouldn't the NHLPA have come out against it, too?

Should a union stand by as management engineers contracts that lower the average salary of members when it comes time for them to negotiate?

If so, what's the point of having a union?

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Football Betting Sportsbook Accepts Credit Cards

Michael Vick is back, Brett Favre isn't and the NFC East remains the best division in the NFC, maybe in all of football.

As players start to gather for the start of another season, some things change and some stay the same in the world of the NFL.

Bet 2010 Super Bowl Odds

The NFC East has been the dominant division in the National Conference for a while, despite limited playoff success, save for the New York Giants surprise Super Bowl win two seasons ago.

Hell, there's a generation of kids in Texas who have never seen the Cowboys win a playoff game (last win was in 1996).

But collectively, the Giants, Eagles, Cowboys and Redskins (well, maybe not so much the Redskins) are as good as a division gets in an NFC conference that has struggled to stay competitive with the AFC side.

Sports bettors have both acknowledged the NFC East's dominance, as one glance at the NFL future odds menu will show.

Looking over the NFL betting odds at online sports book MySportsbook.com we see the top three teams listed to win the NFC Championship are all from the NFC East:

Dallas Cowboys - 7 - 1

Philadelphia Eagles - 13 - 2

New York Giants - 9 - 2

Slotting in behind these three are two teams from the NFC North: the Minnesota Vikings (15-2) and the Chicago Bears (10-1).

Again, despite the lack of recent playoff success, the Dallas Cowboys are popular with the sports betting community, as they hold 14% of all the money wagered on who will win the NFC Championship.

So far, the New York Giants are the bettors' favorite to represent their conference in the Super Bowl, as they have 24% of the overall NFC Championship betting volume.

And what about the Philadelphia Eagles? For the most part, the Eagles had a very productive offseason, the kind that could bring them back to the top.

They had a good draft adding the likes of WR Jeremy Maclin and RB LeSean McCoy.

Unfortunately, the team received a blow when long-time defensive coordinator Jim Johnson passed away on Tuesday.

But this team will make a real run at the division title this year. Going into the regular season, Philly is listed at +240 to win the division.

Last season the Eagles were 9-6-1 SU and 10-6 ATS.

Teams from the NFC East will play teams from the AFC West in the regular season and the Eagles haven't really been a good bet in the last 20 games against the likes of San Diego, Oakland, K.C. and Denver, only going 8-12 ATS.

Two seasons removed from that Super Bowl title, the New York Giants see themselves listed as the odds-on favorite in NFC East championship futures at +162.

Plaxico Burress is gone and with him all the bad publicity surrounding the gun in the sweatpants incident, but can they replace him in the offense?

Last season the Giants were a very reliable bet going 12-4 ATS.

In the Giants' last 20 games against fellow teams from the NFC East; they are 13-7 ATS.

Dallas is listed at +240 to win the division.

Dallas went 9-7 SU and 7-9 ATS last season and with the amount of talent the Cowboys have, a similar performance won't do.

The Cowboys have been atrocious against divisional rivals, going 6-14 ATS in their last 20.

The Washington Redskins are longshots to win the division at +550.

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