Core Economic Issues still to be discussed by League, Players Association -NHL Update
While the National Hockey League (NHL) and Players’ Association have been going at it for the past couple of days in order to save what remains of the 2012-2013 NHL regular season, the core economic issues that are holding them back from announcing a new
collective bargaining agreement are still going under the radar and have both sides on the edge.
The union and league met prior to the date of the start of the regular season, which was set for October 11, 2012, but they failed to make any significant progress, along with the same result being after only the top executives took part in talks the next
day.
"It's a disappointment. There's no way around that," NHL Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly said. "I certainly hoped and would've expected we'd be in a different place today. I would've expected we would've had an agreement. I would've expected we'd be dropping
the puck."
"In retrospect, I look back at it and, while we were all hopeful that there was plenty of time to get a deal done, maybe the fault lies in the fact that we didn't start negotiations until June 29. Again, that goes back to the level of urgency with the players'
association and not being prepared to have those discussions."
The NHL and players are losing a lot of money and everything is aware of that fact as the sometime is now reported to be somewhere close to $200 to $300 million due to the cancellation of the entire preseason and opening two weeks of the regular season.
That amount is set to increase in the upcoming days, especially in November, since the league has set that month as the deadline for the Winter Classic to be declared null and void if they fail to work something out. And with all 100,000 tickets nearly sold-out,
reimbursing everyone is going to be a costly matter for the league, for sure.
Updates and developments on the lockout should be expected sometime next week as both work to trigger another series of talks soon and hopefully, this time, something significant just might come about.
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