NHL

NHLPA: Owners want to cut salaries despite big revenues

Once again, 24 percent is the solution sought by the NHL in collective bargaining with the NHLPA.

Seven years after the league was able to impose a 24-percent rollback on existing contracts as one of the terms of the settlement of the lockout that claimed the 2004-05 season, that is just how much the athletes would have sacrificed if the system proposed by the NHL to go into effect next year had been in effect in 2011-12.

That is the calculation drawn by the players’ association following three days of fact-finding meetings with the league on Sixth Avenue that concluded yesterday, according to a memo from executive director Don Fehr that was obtained by The Post.

Fehr wrote: “We learned that the owners’ proposal, if in effect in 2011-12, would have had the following effects:

“(1) Player compensation would have been reduced by $450 million, or 24 percent … Using the definitions in effect under the current CBA, the ‘46%’ player share in the proposal is really only ‘43% and change.’

“(2) The salary cap would have fall to an Upper limit of $50.8M, a Midpoint of $46.8M, and a floor of only $38.8M.”

The NHL operated last year with an actual cap of $64.3 million and a floor of $48.8 million. If the current CBA were in place next year, the cap would be $70.2 million and the floor, $54.2 million.

Fehr continued in the memo: “(3) This would mean Player compensation would fall to below 2003/04 levels, notwithstanding the large revenue increases in the last few years.”

NHL revenue has grown by nearly $1 billion, to approximately $3.2 billion, over the last seven seasons.

It is not known whether the league has indicated whether a rollback of existing contracts would become part of the new CBA that will replace the current one upon its Sept. 15 expiration.

The league proposal also includes restrictions on systems issues, including a five-year Entry Level system believed to feature an initial two-year contract with a three-year team option; elimination of salary arbitration; free agency following 10 seasons in the league; and five-year term limits on contracts with the elimination of signing bonuses and year-to-year variation of compensation.

With three days of negotiations schedule for next week in Toronto on what are defined as, “non-core economic issues,” Fehr said the union is not yet prepared to formally respond to the league’s proposal.

“When we get to the point where we’re going to formally respond to the proposal they made, by description, by counter-proposal or by [a] proposal of our own, everybody will know,” Fehr told reporters at the conclusion of yesterday’s session during which “technical matters” were reviewed.

Fehr, who served as executive director of the MLBPA for 24 of his 32 years in the baseball players’ union, declined to offer an opinion on where these negotiations are headed (other than to Toronto followed by three consecutive days in New York beginning Aug. 8).

“Hindsight is 100 percent but foresight isn’t,” he said. “And mine hasn’t gotten all that much better in the 30 years I’ve been doing this.”