San Jose Sharks Patrick Marleau Terms Contract Rules as “Handcuffing” General Managers
The National Hockey League (NHL) and Players’ Association have made strides in the past couple of weeks as negotiations continue over a new labour deal as the current lockout has gone to be over two months in duration up until now.
There are still many aspects that need to be covered by both stakeholders and until and unless they are negotiated on, there will be no 2012-2013 NHL regular season, simple as that. Letting out his mind on the contract rules the NHL wants to implement in
a new deal, according to Patrick Marleau, would just be “handcuffing” team general managers even more.
“I think it would be tough for any team to work under those conditions,” Marleau said, according to CSNbayarea.com. “The salary cap already kind of hindered GMs and what they could do, so you would just be handcuffing them that much more.”
New contract rules would limit all contracts to be a maximum of five years long, along with entry-level deals being the same length as well, from the usual three years. These are some aspects players are not willing to compromise on, but it seems like no
matter how much they stand their ground, caving in is ultimately what happens.
Another factor of the lockout that Marleau, a veteran member of the San Jose Sharks team, is worrying about is that fans may have already backed out and begun following another sport. The worry was that a backlash may come into play, but he believes it has
already happened.
“Yeah, definitely. I think there’s already been damage and you’re going to lose fans,” he said. “From where we were at, we’ve taken steps backwards. I think the game was going this way, up and up and up, and where it goes from here…there’s going to be a
lot of things that need fixing once we do get back to playing.”
There are still many aspects that the two stakeholders need to reach a mutual consensus on and nothing can be said about when fans can expect the puck to finally drop after losing the preseason, regular season and recently, the Winter Classic.
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