If the first three months of Owners’ Lockout III represented nothing but pain, the business of negotiating the short-strokes necessary to forge an agreement has become a painstaking affair.
For while the NHL and NHLPA continued to exchange concepts and proposals in Manhattan yesterday, the parties still have meaningful ground to cover in order to meet Cancel-in-Chief Gary Bettman’s agreement deadline of Jan. 11 — apparently there was a date all along, as PA membership always suspected — that would allow the NHL to drop the puck no later than Jan. 19 for a 48-game 2013 season.
The sides yesterday met in small group meetings throughout the afternoon before the NHL, which had received a thorough union counter-proposal on Monday, conducted its own lengthy internal deliberations.
The league then presented the PA with a counter during a 45-minute meeting at league headquarters that began at 9 p.m. The union is expected to respond to the league today following comprehensive review of the latest proffer.
It would be inaccurate to use the shortcut phrase of “give-and-take” to describe these talks, for from the moment of the NHL’s first July 13 proposal, this labor dispute the league turned into its third lockout in 18 years has simply been about establishing the parameters of exactly how much the players would ultimately give and how much the Board would ultimately take.
Significant, if identifiable, gaps between the parties remain between the sides, most believed relating to the steep cliff off which the owners intend the players to walk next year in order to achieve as close to a 50/50 split as possible for 2013-14. The union has presented mechanisms in order to ensure the players a softer landing in the transition from the system that had been in place the last seven years.
There are also issues regarding the pension, a matter thought closed but apparently re-opened by the NHL in what is believed an attempt to barter with the union on another subject.
While the commitment to negotiate has produced at least a modicum of good vibrations, it is a stretch to expect an agreement is imminent, and certainly not if the league is stonewalling on transition matters.
There isn’t a general manager in the NHL who won’t tell you that no trade deal is close until it is completed. The same holds true here. The union, meanwhile, has a deadline of its own today for filing a “disclaimer of interest” that would mark the first step toward decertification and a battle in court over the legality of the lockout that today hits Day 110.