League, Union confident of reaching new labour deal in time -NHL Update'
The National Hockey League (NHL) Players’ Association is ready to put forth a proposal of their own after the league gave them something to ponder upon. Not only that, both stakeholders are confident that a new labour deal will come into play in time.
With the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expiring on September 15th of this year, there has been some running around going on by hockey pundits in order to predict whether the league is heading into a lockout or not. Many analysts
have already gone to the length of assuring that a lengthy lockout is set to come into play.
Executive director of the NHL Players’ Association, Don Fehr, was in Barcelona to meet around 40 players after this week’s meetings came to an end earlier. According to him, there is still time and hopefully by then, both sides will come to a mutual agreement.
"I don't think time's running out yet," Fehr said by phone Monday. "I still think if the parties are dedicated to it, there's sufficient time to reach an agreement."
A lockout will obviously come from the players’ side if it has to but Fehr, remembering how tragic the previous lockout in 2004-2005, is not favouring it in any way along with mentioning that the current deal does not have a lockout clause in it.
"There's no law that says you have to lock out," Fehr said. "If both parties are both really interested in trying to reach an agreement, and if we both really care what the people watching hockey games think, then we ought to be doing everything we can to
avoid that eventuality. And that includes not short-circuiting the process."
Fortunately, the CBA was designed to be such that a lockout would not be implemented even if talks went beyond the September 15th deadline.
For now, the NHL has also shown its cooperation by providing the PA with all sorts of financial information which had been demanded by the latter in previous meetings.
Updates can be expected on talks between the two stakeholders in the upcoming days as both meet again, most likely in New York in the league offices.
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