A good article from Wednesday's Buffalo News:

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20 ... 019092.asp

PAYING THE PRICE

Cover Story: Money sacrificed in NHL lockout hit close to home for those at the bottom of the pay scales

By TIM GRAHAM
News Sports Reporter
5/11/2005

A lot has changed since Eric Boulton last left HSBC Arena. The winger had to sell his house in Clarence Center.

"Everyone thinks we're all millionaires... Two years before I was playing in the NHL I was making $14,000 in the East Coast Hockey League." Eric Boulton

Mark Mulville/Buffalo News
"It's just disappointing when you only have so many years to make a decent living." Sabres forward Adam Mair, who would have made $533,000

Adam Mair shut off his cell phone.

Eric Boulton couldn't afford his mortgage in Clarence Center and had to sell his house.

Andrew Peters still lives with his parents.

NHL players were making an average of $1.8 million a year - the average at the start of the 1994 lockout was $733,000 - before the work stoppage wiped out the season and ensured nobody would be paid a cent to play big-league hockey in 2004-05.

Few feel a shred of sympathy for wealthy athletes and roll their eyes at the notion of their perceived financial sacrifice. Some might even find enjoyment out of the situation, perhaps feeling the players are receiving a little comeuppance, even though they're receiving either a $5,000 or $10,000 monthly lockout stipend in addition to whatever money they might have made playing in the minors or overseas.

Yet there are those who haven't been able to compile fat savings accounts, players who make far below the league average and haven't been around too long. They are the sorts who have a tendency to be treated as interchangeable parts - third or fourth liners, journeymen, pluggers.

"Never going to make that money back," said Boulton, the Buffalo Sabres' fourth-line winger who was supposed to make $600,000 this season. "A lot of money gone out the window. Hopefully it'll be worth it in the long run for the future of the game."

Players certainly aren't alone in feeling a pinch. The entire Sabres coaching staff had their paychecks cut in half. Sabres Managing Partner Larry Quinn and General Manager Darcy Regier took voluntary 25 percent salary reductions.

Everyone affiliated with the NHL - agents, arena ushers, hot dog vendors, local tavern owners and restaurateurs - was affected by the lockout, but some more so than others.

Those who made anywhere near the league average salary for a few seasons should have been prepared for the predictably lengthy lockout. Others had difficulties.

"Everyone thinks we're all millionaires, but I'm far from a millionaire," Boulton said. "I've played four years in the league, and I've saved enough to start a future after hockey. But I'm not swimming in it. Two years before I was playing in the NHL I was making $14,000 in the East Coast Hockey League."

Boulton and his wife, Ryan, sold their house in Clarence Center and took their two small children back to a house they previously rented out in Lexington, S.C., just so he could play for the Columbia Inferno of the ECHL.

"We put our house up for sale because we knew it was going to be a long lockout," Boulton said. "It didn't make sense paying for a mortgage in Buffalo when I'm not there. With no paycheck coming in you have to cut corners, you know?"

Gregg Huller knows. He was one of about 25 Sabres front office employees who was laid off in the fall. The team's former media relations manager, like others who were let go, received a severance package and extended insurance coverage.

But Huller wasn't able to land a job until Monday, when he started work as a medical claims analyst for North American Health Plans in Amherst.

"It's been pretty slow," Huller said. "I've gone on interviews, not that I haven't had opportunity, but nothing paid off. A lot of the interest that you'd get would be at quite a reduced salary. Even the job I do now is almost half my pay, and it's not that I was making a heck of a lot with the Sabres."

Huller's sacrifices have been significant. He and wife Beth, who also works at North American Health Plans, discovered she was pregnant shortly after he was laid off. She miscarried around Christmas.

"We wanted to try again, but we just couldn't afford it," Huller said. "You want to do what's best for your family, and we had to wait for everything to clear up.

"We can't go out to eat like we used to. We didn't have a vacation. We don't do anything extravagant. We started to refinish our basement last summer, but we had to stop because we ran out of money."

Mike Wulkan is a Williamsville-based agent who, compared to the likes of Don Meehan or Mark Gandler, runs a mom-and-pop operation.

Wulkan's NHL roster pretty much consists of Boulton, Nashville Predators defenseman Shane Hnidy, Detroit Red Wings defenseman Bryan Helmer and center Eric Manlow, and New York Islanders winger Eric Godard and goalie Dieter Kochan.

"I was just starting to make it, just starting to turn the corner when they shut me down, too," said Wulkan. He's 36 and has been an agent for five years.

"It has been a sacrifice. It hasn't been easy. My salary was predicated on my NHL guys. Four NHL guys equal 20 guys in the minors. I went from close to six figures to losing 75 percent of my income. It's brutal," he said.

Amy Wulkan previously worked only three days a week as a veterinary technician so she could spend more time with their 2-year-old daughter, Payton. Now mom is picking up shifts whenever she can to help support the household.

"If there was hockey, she didn't have to work," Mike Wulkan said. "But who's going to feel sorry for us? We're not looking for sympathy, but if this doesn't get settled by September or October, I'm in trouble."

The players, especially those still trying to forge a career in the NHL, don't seem as upset about the lost income as they are about lost opportunities.

The average NHL life span is about four years, and since most don't obtain college degrees before turning pro, there's a sense of urgency to make hay when the sun is shining.

"It's just disappointing when you only have so many years to make a decent living," said Mair, who would have made $533,000 in his third season with Buffalo this winter. "These are the years that hopefully set you up for when you're making substantially less.

"It's very hard to sympathize with the players. There are people out there who make an hourly wage and would love to make the money we do. But we're not asking to be paid any more money than what we're worth in the environment we work in. When there are only 600 or 700 people in the whole world who can do your specialty, you're on top of the food chain for a short period of time, and things can change on a dime."

Peters was a rookie in 2003-04, when he made $350,000. After leading the Sabres with 151 penalty minutes, he signed a two-year contract last summer and was scheduled to make $400,000 this season.

Peters, who said he would have bought a house by now if not for the lockout, still lives with his folks in St. Catharines but soon will be moving into an apartment with his big brother, Geoff Peters, who made more this season playing center for the Rochester Americans.

"I don't have a house. I don't have kids. I don't have a wife," said Andrew Peters, who estimated his monthly expenses (vehicle, insurance, cell phone) at about $1,100.

"But I'm not making the money I would have to set myself up for the future. It's more frustrating career-wise. You just get into the NHL and then they close the door on you. They took a whole year away."

Said Boulton: "It's not like we're starving or anything, but you have to sit down and really think, "Do I really need this? Do I really want to buy that?' Every day that goes by without a paycheck - well, your savings aren't going to stay there forever."

e-mail: tgraham@buffnews.com

Boo frickity hoo!

HA! My company that I work for owns that company. I should send him an e-mail with a picture of a tissue....(and claims analysts make about $10 an hour).

sucks for the kids who were gonna get drafted this year... wouldn't say i feel bad, but in a way i guess i do. i feel bad for myself for not being able to watch hockey.

WAH!!!! I LOST MY MORTAGE WAHHHHH!!!!....I CAN'T PAY MY CELL PHONE WAAHHHH!!!!!.....I HAVE NO MONEY....WAHHHHHH!!!!!!.....this is going to continue to happen until the other 300 hundred players decide to stand up to Bob Goodnow and his band of croonies. Damphouse, Guerin, Linden, Boughner and the other 2 players who make up the "axis of evil" in the players union. Fuck em, let em rot, they have runined the sport.

Hmmm... seems like they're making as much by sitting on their asses for two months as some people do by working their asses off for a year.

Want to see them back in October? Damn right.

Feel sorry for them? I do feel sorry for those who want to play and disagree with Bob Goodenow but that has nothing to do with their financial situations. I'm sure a lot of players are willing to take massive pay cuts just so they can play.

Why'd you even post the article then?

The people I feel sorry for are the people who work at stuadiums selling concessions and guiding people to their seats. The people at the bottom of the pole in hockey who had no choice on the strike and are suffering much much greater than overpaid pampered athletes.

Hmmm...I didn't read that long-ass article, but I'd like to point something out:

ESPN2 had scheduled to televise X amount of NHL games this past season...since the NHL is taking a year off, ESPN2 had to fill the space left blank by non-existent hockey games.

So they went with college basketball, and from what I understand, the ratings KILLED the hockey ratings from the same time slots a year ago.

Say goodbye to hockey games on TV.....even IF the NHL ever gets their heads back on straight.

i feel sympathy for the lower paid players who need the money.

Nah, no sympathy. they still made $500000!!! How can they not afford the phone bill!!! Damn, I wish I made that money. That is more than my parents make in a decade and we pay the phone bill. Gimme a break.

they have previous financial commitments (house) that they have to pay for.

No sympathy whatsoever. The lowest paid guys are still making 6 figures, correct? Maybe I'm wrong on that...but my point is, the majority of players make WAY more than the average American. WAAAAYYYYY more. If they're not smart enough to put some of that away, instead of blowing it all on Ferrari's and jewelry, then that's their own fault.

And again, I repeat: Say goodbye to hockey games on TV.

They left out the part about how many NHL players are playing in other leagues now, making plenty of dough.

and how there keeping guys who can get into the NHL out of jobs...I will say it again, I am a huge hockey fan, But fear the sport is dead.

Clearly you don't live in Canada.

Sorry.

I was talking to my fellow Americans (about how the basketball games they used to replace the hockey schedule got MUCH higher ratings).

Oh I know. I guess it makes sense, I just don't understand how people can NOT want to watch hockey.

Most of the star NHL players went to Europe, not the WHL, CHL, OHL..etc..
That's not holding anyone back.

The NHL is severely fucked. They'll never, ever get back what they had...and that wasn't much.