Nhl players are drawing another line in the sand to cross themselves. This time, it appears NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is double-daring them to take that fatal step they wouldn’t make Wednesday.
Lockout III has reached the rub-their-faces-in-it stage, and the league’s gamble now is the players never stop swallowing.
The rank-and-file is to complete voting this evening and is expected to re-authorize the Players Association’s “disclaimer of interest” that would remove the union as the NHL’s collective bargaining opponent and effectively blow up this season. The league filed suit to prevent the first authorization from being implemented, but actions since it expired Wednesday invited re-authorization.
Bettman’s deadline on settling his own lockout is Friday for play to begin Jan. 19. That deadline looks increasingly like a finish line that was mapped and painted months ago.
There is some belief that if this season is lost, Bettman will lose his job. That didn’t happen when the 2004-05 season was scuttled, eventually bringing in the salary cap, nor when the league returned to play in 1995 without winning a full cap, just the thin-edge rookie cap.
There will be rejoicing in some NHL boardrooms if the Players Association needs to be recertified later, for there may be more internal turmoil of the sort that followed the coup against Bob Goodenow in 2005. Facing a fractured union would enable the league to extract even more flesh when negotiations would start afresh, with the threat of antitrust action being the sole impediment to rule by decree.
The league set back talks Thursday by seeking to make Bettman the decider on punishments for teams that hide hockey-related revenue, rather than rely on stipulated sanctions, The Post’s Larry Brooks reported. In addition, Bettman told the players several general managers told him they would welcome the chance to dismantle their teams through buyouts in a salary cap slash to $60 million for 2013-14.
The sides operated separately through mediation yesterday, and with time growing short, a return to the table today is imperative, but not assured.