Hockey Legend Wayne Gretzky terming New Year to mark end of Lockout -NHL Update
Hockey’s ‘Great One’ has finally come out to talk about the lockout prevailing in the National Hockey League (NHL) at the moment, and has set the turn of the year to be the date when he predicts the regular season will continue.
With as much experience as Gretzky has with hockey, not only on the ice, but off it as well, many experts term his prediction as one that certainly holds some weight. Obviously fans are hoping that the lockout will end in time for the regular season to start
on time, but there is no telling if the NHL and Players’ Association will be able to work things out in time.
“I think that in 2004 we were changing the whole landscape,” Gretzky told an audience during a personal finance conference on Monday, according to the TorontoSun.com. “Ownership wanted to have some sort of revenue sharing, and once we came to the revenue
sharing, the hard part — from my point of view — seems to be out of the way.”
For Gretzky, Donald Fehr, the executive director of the NHLPA, is someone who will be able to work out the best deal for players and do it soon, along with regarding NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman as knowing how to deal with such situations.
“The only thing I will say is the commissioner’s office and Donald Fehr and the players’ association are very smart men; they’re both very intelligent,” Gretzky said.
As far as the Winter Classic goes, Gretzky could not tell whether that would be held on time as it is set for the same day he predicts the lockout to come to an end and the league has already set November as being the month they decide whether to keep it
or not.
Gretzky also went on to say that there is a need to work out a deal that would be fair to both stakeholders and for analysts, seeing how the league wants to cut the players down on every level, it will be interesting to see how things work out in the upcoming
days.
Both sides are set to meet for the fourth time in five days on Tuesday.
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