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ForumGhost

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Eighty days and counting. That's how long it's been so far and the players are exactly where Bettman and the league want them: tired of not playing and ready to make a deal. Listening to RDS tonight, I was laughing. Renault Lavoie was talking about the possibility of a two years lock-out, of using replacement players next year, anything. That's ridiculous. It's negotiations. Bettman not being there at this time is part of the strategy. I remain confident that we will see hockey this season. I thought that it would start at the beginning of this month. Well, it will be a little later, but it will come.

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I have seen no indication, one way or the other, which way this last meeting has gone. i would believe that there must have been enough progress that there will be a report that the NHL Board of Directors will consider. I don't think anybody other than the top league executives have any idea which way that report may go. Ultimately if the board don't ratify an agreement or some future to the talks we got a done dinner. There is no point in making any announcement unless this step is done.

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PLS PLS PLS end the lockout. Removing the NHL-players from Allsvenskan would be fantastic news for my team.

Leksand hasnt signed one single locked out player and the steps backwards the other teams would take is just what we need right now.

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Bettman held a brief, and I mean brief, press conference this afternoon. It lasted slightly longer than the time it has taken you guys to read this post so far. He is pleased with the process at this moment in time. Good news for sure.

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Bettman held a brief, and I mean brief, press conference this afternoon. It lasted slightly longer than the time it has taken you guys to read this post so far. He is pleased with the process at this moment in time. Good news for sure.

Doesn't take a great genius to conclude that the discussions have entered in very sensitive territory. I believe that great progress has been done and that we will hockey before Christmas. Let's hope I am right.

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Brian Lawton is saying Jeremy Jacobs was the most helpful when it came to the owners talking to the players.

It's Lawton who is a bit... I'll keep the language clean, but yeah. Talk about odd.

TSN guys are saying that its Virkle and Mario on the Owner side, and Sidney Crosby on the players side.

I'll believe the TSN guys for now. (Dreger, Pierre LeBrun, Bobby Mac);

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Fehr just had a press conference (and not a 26 second one like Bettman yesterday), it certainly makes it sound like they're heading in the right direction but I remain cautious about getting too excited. They believe there are agreements on the pension fund and the transition/make whole proposals and for the first time they have brought in a contract length limit in one of their proposals. From listening and taking notes to the live presser (easier said than done when I'm trying to type out a column for the main site to go up later tonight), here is where the remaining main gaps are:

CBA term: NHL proposal: 10 years (opt-out at Year 8, don't know who has the option or if it's mutual) NHLPA Proposal: 8 years (PA option to opt-out after 6)

Contract term: NHL: Max 5 years for players with new teams, 7 years for players re-signing (there is a huge, exploitable hole in that) NHLPA: Max 8 years

Cap circumvention deals: NHL: Max 5% variance NHLPA: New rules, known as a cap-recapture, that would penalize teams that sign deals beyond 7 years (so 7 or 8) if those players are 'physically able to play but do not.'

The NHLPA also proposes the the '100% rule' (click here for an explanation about what that is) would remain intact in terms of guiding year-by-year dollar variations in deals plus a caveat that the lowest dollar value year must be at least 25% of the highest dollar value year.

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And the deal has been rejected already with the NHL indicating that everything is 'off the table.' I don't know if that means everything as in everything or everything as in what hasn't been agreed upon and that what they proposed is off the table. So, it appears, we're close to square one again.

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Well, it looks bad right now, but I have a feeling we are witnessing the endgame, the final application of pressure from both sides. They're going to push each other every bit as far to the edge as they can possibly get, in order to be sure they are extracting maximum concessions from the other side.

Sadly, this has never been about finding an agreement both sides can live with - it's been about each side trying to make sure it gets the maximum possible without sacrificing the entire season. So despite all the pessimism, I think a deal is fairly close, if only because they can't go much more than another what, 2-3 weeks (?) without losing the whole season.

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It's funny - as I noted earlier, I was writing tonight's column to be posted onto the site. I started about two and a half hours ago with some general thoughts on the lockout as part of the article. Then we had Fehr's first presser, I then re-wrote those thoughts (spinning them a bit more positively since it appeared some progress was made). Then came the second presser, which caused me to re-write what I had just re-written (spinning it more negatively this time). Then Bettman spoke...and I threw my hands up and got rid of the comments altogether (save for a quick couple of sentences at the beginning or the end). After tonight, I don't think anyone wants to read about CBA talking points for a while.

So with that in mind, I present, for your reading enjoyment, an article about the lockout (my timing is impeccably bad...): http://www.habsworld.net/article.php?id=2952

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I give the oscar to Gary Bettman for "angry press conference"

What a tool

The NHL's stance here makes no sense. The league was asking for a 6 year CBA in every single offer except last night.... not 10 years is necessary.

The NHLPA has said that cap hits for retired players count against the cap. Now 5 years is the "hill we will die on" to make a deal.

This is ridiculous. And to pull all the offers off the table for this? Crazy.

I think the NHL has found disagreement for the sake of disagreement after most of the other issues were settled and are pulling a stunt here to try and break the union. They never wanted a deal, they want a fractured, splintered union.

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I give the oscar to Gary Bettman for "angry press conference"

What a tool

The NHL's stance here makes no sense. The league was asking for a 6 year CBA in every single offer except last night.... not 10 years is necessary.

The NHLPA has said that cap hits for retired players count against the cap. Now 5 years is the "hill we will die on" to make a deal.

This is ridiculous. And to pull all the offers off the table for this? Crazy.

I think the NHL has found disagreement for the sake of disagreement after most of the other issues were settled and are pulling a stunt here to try and break the union. They never wanted a deal, they want a fractured, splintered union.

I agree that this most recent blow-up is pretty much B.S., but I have real trouble believing that the owners really are prepared to destroy the entire season simply to break the union. For me, the objective all along has been to push the union as close to the edge as humanly possible in the hope that it will break (in fairness, the union is doing something similar - pushing back as far as they can, in the hope of extracting the most they can - the difference being that the union actually seems to have been bargaining in something like good faith). For all the ego and arrogance, you don't get to be a billionaire owner without knowing the difference between extracting every last drop of blood from a negotiation, and blowing your business up to make a point. There is still the risk of a miscalculation that queers the whole thing, but I am pretty confident we'll see hockey within the next month or so. So I take this last bit of grandstanding as a perversely good sign: the last, or almost last, act in the low-grade grotesque drama.

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Of the three core issues that appear to remain from my post last night (provided cooler heads prevail and everything quietly goes back on the table), I think two could reasonably be solved by a bit of give and take on each side. The owners want 10 years with an opt-out at 8, players want 8 and 6 respectively. 8 isn't a bad number (and as Commandant noted, they were content with 6 in earlier offers - but with more contractual restrictions and less 'Make Whole' money) , just move the opt-out to 7 (guaranteeing 6 full years of labour peace); both sides should be able to live with that. As for player term, the PA has yielded and offered a cap of 8, owners want 5 (or 7 if a re-signing). Make it a cap of 6 with 7 for a re-signing (provided some sort of clause similar to the NBA's 'Bird Rights' provision can be done, otherwise this will be a huge loophole).

The back-diving/cap recapture, to me, is where it gets really murky. In my opinion, provided that things do go back on the table, this is the big issue as both sides still aren't talking the same language. The NHL's rationale for the 5% variance is twofold - 1: Eliminate the back-diving deals plus 2: Eliminate heavily front-loaded deals as larger market teams have an unfair advantage over the smaller market ones in terms of using signing bonuses to help persuade a player to sign.

The PA's 'Cap Benefit Recapture' I think does a decent job of covering the first of the NHL's concerns. It's a long process to go through whereby penalties could come in the form of carried forward cap overages to be deducted against a current year cap (at least, that's what I've been able to piece together) but it does little to cover front-loading, especially with the signing bonuses. If you're a GM and front-loading a contract gets you that final piece of the puzzle, potential penalties half a decade later isn't going to deter anyone. It should also be noted that in their proposal, potentially no one at all would be affected as it would only apply to new deals extending past 6 years (so 7 or 8). If the PA opts out after 6 as they've proposed, any potentially offending team could get off scot-free if that rule is axed or amended in the 2019 CBA talks.

Suffice it to say, this is the issue where they aren't on the same page yet. This will be a key talking point in the next round of talks.

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I agree that this most recent blow-up is pretty much B.S., but I have real trouble believing that the owners really are prepared to destroy the entire season simply to break the union.

Bettman and Jacobs know what Fehr did for baseball. It's the last thing they want, even if baseball has been pretty happy since their strike.

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Bettman and Jacobs know what Fehr did for baseball. It's the last thing they want, even if baseball has been pretty happy since their strike.

What is the difference in the leagues approach? between nhl and mlb

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Everyone knew that there were other issues yet to be agreed on. What seems to have brought the negotiations to a screeming halt was the compensation for contracts already signed. The owners felt when they brought the figure up to 300 M that the rest of the issues should be handed over to owner's jurisprudence. The players on the other hand saw it as a saw off, because they would have to concede about the same amount to get to the 300 mark. Therefore they want to negotiate the remaining articles. It is a great tactic if you don't have to recognize the others position, but makes bargaining pretty tough.

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The NHL officially cancels games through December 30th. No real surprise there, an announcement was expected sometime this week. I'm glad to see it's only another two week block and not a month like a lot of people were guessing it would be.

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The brief and shining idea of a return of NHL hockey on Christmas Day was terrifically appealing, though. What a drag. However, we should have known better to expect any resolution of this dispute before the last possible moment, given that both sides are determined to squeeze every last drop of blood that they conceivably can.

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The brief and shining idea of a return of NHL hockey on Christmas Day was terrifically appealing, though.

You still might see something close to that. I don't think it's entirely out of the realm of possibility that we see a deal announced just before Christmas - it's not games being played like you were hoping for but a deal being done then is the next best thing. Last month when I picked January 1st as my prediction for the season to start, I had the idea of a six day training camp in mind (Dec. 26-31) with no exhibition games. That would allow for a deal to be worked out somewhere around the 22nd or so, close enough to Christmas...and although not related, also early enough to cause massive last second changes to the World Junior squads (rosters are registered on the 25th).

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As most of you who have followed the day-to-day saga know already, a lot of the progress was made via what was mostly considered to be a Pittsburgh connection (Lemieux, Crosby, Brisson, and Burkle). What you might not know is that Marc Bergevin apparently was part of the process as well. http://triblive.com/sports/penguins/3096577-85/nhl-lemieux-players#axzz2Ehirpxis

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