NHL, Players' Association agree on $70.2 million salary cap, CBA talks expected to start on Friday
Ensuring a smooth and gradual start to the 2012-2013 National Hockey League (NHL) regular season is something everyone in association with the North American major league wants.
The league and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) agreed on a $70.2 million salary cap hit for the upcoming season, which is viewed as a good start to kick off negotiations for a renewal of the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which are expected
to start on Friday, June 29, 2012.
“They (have expressed) they we would like to have a quick and painless negotiation,” said NHLPA executive director, Donald Fehr. “All I can say is from our standpoint, nothing would make us happier than to get to a resolution that everybody can find acceptable,”
he said, and do it in “as fast and as least difficult a manner as we can figure out.”
NHLPA is reported to be going in to demand as much as they can after NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, briefed the media during the previous weeks about record profits being made and the players certainly want their fair share of the earnings.
“More revenues, record revenues, growing business, greater appeal of hockey, higher television ratings, all those things are good news,” added Fehr. “That forms a significant part of the background.”
The first thing that the two sides have done up until now is approve the $70.2 million offseason cap, with a lower limit of $54.2 million, but does not confirm its stability for the new CBA along with salary caps for the upcoming season.
September 15 is the date set for the current CBA to come to an end, which was signed by both stakeholders after the league faced a regular season lockout back in 2004-2005. Since then, things have been running smoothly and it is definitely in favour of both
sides that they continue doing so.
The salary cap was reported to be $39 million during the first year of the CBA and grew to an amount of $64.3 million this past one and now, the current signs point towards it starting off from $70.2 million from next year.
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