League, Players' Association continue negotiations, focus shifts to initial proposal -NHL Update
The talks between the National Hockey League (NHL) and Players’ Association were back in Manhattan, New York, at the league’s offices in order to further discuss what is reported to be further in detail the initial proposal made by the team lead by Commissioner
Gary Bettman.
While this week, it was expected that the NHLPA would be making a counterproposal but it has been learnt that the Players’ Association executive director, Donald Fehr, has termed the delay due to the lack of information and readiness from the league’s side.
What Fehr wants to do at the moment is give a proposal which could be termed to be of a close-to-final nature and not uncertain like the one made by the league.
"We haven't evaluated the changes from current revenue sharing to determine whether we think it's the appropriate thing to do or if it misses the mark in some respect," Fehr said.
Asked again whether a deal would be reached by the expiration date of the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA), seeing the frustration on Fehr’s face was not hard as he termed it not to be any set date by which both sides had to reach an agreement.
"All I've said is Sept. 15 is not a magic date unless someone wants to make it so," Fehr stated. "There's nothing that happens on Sept. 15 if we don't have an agreement, provided nobody says we're going to go on strike or says we're going to lock the doors."
Meetings between the league and labour union will continue on Wednesday in New York up until Thursday before both sides go out for the weekend. Currently, they are continuing to ask the league to further explain in detail the initial proposal made by them
before actually coming out with one of their own.
"We're doing our best to comply with all of their requests regardless of whether we think they are relevant," NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, said.
Owners of many clubs like Washington Capitals’ Ted Leonsis, Minnesota Wild’s Craig Leipold and Boston Bruins’ Jeremy Jacobs were alongside Gary Bettman, representing the league along with Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke and Jim Rutherford of Carolina
Hurricanes.
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