By Kara Yorio

updated 3:58 p.m. ET Feb. 26, 2004

It is the center of the firestorm, this innocent-looking piece of paper. Ever since the October 1 meeting when the NHL presented its collective bargaining proposal to players -- in the form of a singular sheet -- the players and their union have used it as the symbol of all that is wrong with the league.

Well, I have seen the lightning rod, and it is not impressive. And that is the problem.

The NHL's biggest mistake was going into that meeting without a fancy proposal with a colored cardboard cover, a few pretty, labeled tabs and weight of at least four pounds. Instead, the NHL offered a piece of paper that has set off months of bitter rhetoric. The paper was an insult, the players say. It was a proposed hard salary cap, and the one-page presentation showed the league didn't make an effort, they say.

What were the league's high-level men thinking? In the last wave of big-name free agents signing big-time contracts two summers ago, the players were won over by wooing. Offers came from executives on personal visits because simply calling and offering $9 million a year wasn't enough. Prospective players were given team jerseys with their names on the backs, as if they had never had a real NHL jersey. They were shown DVDs of the city they could call home, as if New York or Dallas or wherever were never-before-seen destinations.

The message was clear, and the NHL missed it: The players like a flashy presentation that shows apparent effort. They like to feel wanted, and words alone are not enough. Never mind what was on the paper. The league blew it by putting away the bells and whistles. No woo, no way.

But getting past the insult to the content, did the league propose a cap? It was a "concept," says NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly. Looking at it, one can see how the players' association calls it a cap, but in this war of semantics, the paper did not say such. Nor did it declare a maximum amount for player payroll per team. Therefore, it was not a hard salary cap as most people understand it.

On that paper, league revenue was listed at $2 billion (all numbers have been changed to protect ... something). The league subtracted "other costs" -- travel, general managers, arena expenses, etc. Then a "reasonable profit" for each team was subtracted. That left $1.05 billion, or 52.5 percent of the revenue, for player costs, which includes benefits, playoff money and salary. Daly says this is the important number and that it is negotiable.

From $1.05 billion, the league subtracted benefits and playoff money (and these two numbers can be changed however the players' association would like). From that, there was about $968 million left. That number, the league says, is what is left to pay the players. And so it divided the number by 30 teams and came up with an "average player payroll." By our calculation, that number was a little more than $32 million. The well-reported actual number on the paper was $31 million.

Is that what the players want? No, of course not. That's only about 3 1/2 Rangers per team. But was this piece of paper enough reason to get Norma Rae riled? Was this piece of paper reason to stop talking completely and ratchet up the rhetoric?

I am neither pro-management nor pro-union. I am pro-resolution. There is right and wrong on both sides. The blame for getting to this point goes to management. Nobody told the owners to buy these businesses and run them this way. No one told owners to hire a general manager, get suckered by a few clever agents and offer to spend more money than their teams make. If you are a bad businessman, you likely will have a bad business. And here we are.

As for the players, it's about time they learned what the rest of us know: When you are an employee in an industry that is not doing well, there are no raises and no bonuses. People don't get brought in to help, and benefits are affected. The players might not want a specific percentage relationship between revenue and player costs, but there is a direct relationship between how well businesses do and how much employees make, even when it's not stated in a percentage.

At this point, the facts barely matter, though. The substance and philosophy of the argument have been forgotten in the regurgitated rhetoric and accusations. At the heart of that talk is that one piece of paper -- and seriously poor presentation. For the fans' sake, for the game's sake, when that next meeting finally comes, the league had better remember the candy and flowers.

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