League expresses desire to continue negotiating after Players' Association's counterproposal -NHL
It is surprising that the National Hockey League (NHL) has managed to be the most active participant in the negotiations over a new labour deal as of yet as the executives from the league’s side are waiting for something productive from the Players’ Association.
There are two stakeholders in the entire process of negotiating over a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), as the current one is set to expire on September 15th.
"We feel like we made a good step in that direction (toward progress) earlier this week and we hope that they would take a step forward as well," NHL Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly, said.
While both sides are hoping that a new deal is in place before the expiration of the current one, in order to save the upcoming regular season from a lockout, there is still no telling whether it could be completed in that limited timeframe.
"We're almost into September now," Daly added. "I would say the positive thing is I think both parties are committed, if there are reasons to meet and continue to move forward, to meet as often as it takes to get a deal done. But, obviously every day that goes by it's less and less likely that we'll be able to come to closure on all of the issues we need to come to closure on."
The second proposal put forth by the league focused mainly on core economic issues, as told by NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettman. It is one of the biggest areas where both sides are facing difficulty in finding common ground, but could be seeing a major change when they meet again on Friday, August 31, 2012.
"We're not married to the structure, so if it's a good proposal [from the Union] and takes a different route, we're open to that," Daly stated.
As of now, the league is looking forward to bringing back the whole structure back to the one it was before, but the Players’ Association find it unacceptable in every term to let down what they think is their right.
Updates should be expected in the upcoming days.
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