NHL, NHLPA meet again in continuation for New Labour Deal Talks
The National Hockey League (NHL) and NHL Players’ Association met for a second time after kicking off talks in regards to a new or refreshed labour deal, on Thursday, July 5, 2012, but not too many details were released to the public.
Since the current collective bargaining agreement is set to expire on September 15th, both sides know that continuing to negotiate and work towards a new deal as early as possible is the only way the next season will start smoothly.
"We had a constructive meeting," NHLPA executive director, Donald Fehr, said. "When you're beginning negotiations, you need to have dialogue. You need to see what you have a common understanding about, what you need to flesh out, what you need to discuss further. We did some of that today. We still have groups meeting now, and we're going to reconvene tomorrow morning. That's about all I can say about it."
"It is a business-like start," Fehr added.
According to Fehr, releasing the specifics about the meetings would not be of any benefit as of right now since there have not been any concrete dealings and everything is rather just in a kick off sort of mood.
There were eight players along with a number of legal experts with the executive director as he attended the meeting in Manhattan on Thursday.
A number of issues are believed to be surrounding the talks like percentage of the players, revenue sharing, cap floor, length of term along with disclosing actual expenses and revenue. Players want to take it to another level this time around as they hope to become more active in the business of their franchises instead of just getting a pay check and playing.
The minimums are most likely to be raised again as they were following the lockout. It is not a surprise to see that general managers are looking more interested as well since NHL commissioner Gary Bettman termed this past year to hold record profits for the league.
John Tavares, Matt Moulson, Rick DiPietro, Ruslan Fedotenko, Kevin Westgarth, Ron Hainsey, Manny Malhotra and B.J. Crombeen were present with Fehr on the occasion.
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