Latest League Proposal not a Done Deal for Players Association -NHL Lockout Update
Fans should not be getting excited to start of their National Hockey League (NHL) regular season just yet as the labour union has termed the latest offer by the NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and team owners to be just a proposal and not a done deal.
While the next meeting between the two stakeholders is scheduled for Thursday, October 18, 2012, there is a lot of hope and anticipation that after a milestone of an offer by the league, the Players’ Association will also make one that will ultimately lead to a done deal between them. According to Commissioner Bettman, an 82-game regular season is still on the cards if they manage to work something out before November 2nd, along with the annual Winter Classic being salvaged as well.
For the labour union, if the NHL had made this kind of offer back when the negotiations kicked off earlier in June, they just might have avoided the lockout, but better sooner than later; as they now look towards working from here.
“The overall consensus is that if they had started out with this back in June or July or whenever they put that first (expletive) offer on the table, we’d probably have a deal done by now,” the Boston Herald’s source said. “It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not as good as they spun it in the media. Everybody that called in (on the players’ association conference call last night) at first was saying, ‘Wow, we’ve got to take this.’ But by the time it was done getting explained, all the players were like, ‘OK, let’s figure out where we’re going to go from here and get back to them and try to get it going.’
There are still many things both sides need to reach a consensus on and for them, this is a step in the right direction. Thursday is being looked at by experts as being highly important to tell whether the regular season will be saved or not.
Updates should be expected after the NHL and Players’ Association meet on Thursday for a second meeting this week.
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