During Tuesday’s meeting between the NHL and NHLPA, the League and Owners presented their counter-proposal to the players. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said that the newest proposal was designed to move the negotiations along as the current CBA expires in a little over two weeks.
Courtesy: Lee Kirby/US Presswire
The counter-proposal’s basis is to reduce the league’s financial demands by over $460M over the life of the deal, which is 6-years, with a $120M reduction coming in the first year alone. In the first three years, the players would receive between 11% and 5.5% less than the current CBA requires, but would also receive a share of “upside hockey-related revenue” of a little over 10% in the first three years. In the final three years the league and players would split the revenue 50-50. The salary cap, which is set at $70M under the current CBA, would be set at $58M and rise to $60M and $62M the next two years. There was no mention of any proposal involving contract length at this time.
There is a concern about lowering the salary cap that much because it would leave so many teams over, but it is said the NHL would be willing to discuss ‘transitioning contracts’ over to accommodate the cap.
The NHLPA is set to respond today with their counter-proposal to this counter-proposal and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, eh?
With the negotiations speeding up and heading no-where, there are a lot of rumblings about many players heading over seas to play if there is a lockout. During the 2004-2005 lockout, an enormous amount of NHL players packed their bags and played in Europe and now the KHL is ready to pick up any one willing to jump ship if it happens again. The Pittsburg Post-Gazette reported that Evgeni Malkin is in talks with teams in Moscow and Magnitogorsk about playing out a week-by-week contract. It’s also been rumored that Alex Ovechkin was approached by Moscow Dynamo and Ilya Kovalchuk and Pavel Datsyuk are also rumored to head back to Russia. Many North American players are ready as well. 37 year old Martin St. Louis had this to say to the Tampa Bay Times:
“With my age, you want to keep playing. I don’t want to take a year off. If the NHL wants to shut us down, we’ll go play somewhere else. You have to be patient before you go to Europe, but it’s definitely an option guys will look into.”
Something needs to happen and soon. I don’t think I’d be able to afford season tickets to the Severstal Cherepovets – yes that’s a real team.
More to come…
