Yesterday was about make-whole for the players and make-whole for low-revenue teams — otherwise known as, revenue sharing — as the NHL and NHLPA met for six hours in an attempt to find common ground in the owners’ lockout that is now 54 days old.
The parties will reconvene for the third straight day today at an undisclosed location in Manhattan in an effort to ensure that the 2012-13 season will be played.
“We’ll see,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Post via email. “[It’s] tough to handicap.”
The “make-whole” proposal presented by the league to the Players Association shifted the responsibility for honoring existing contracts away from the players and onto the league, two sources with knowledge of the plan told The Post.
The offer, under which the league would assume the escrow caused by an immediate decrease in the players’ overall share of hockey related revenue from 57-to-50 percent, is believed to include deferred payments.
It is not known whether make-whole would apply to only the first two years of existing contracts or whether it would cover the length of all existing contracts. The difference the first two years—before any pro-rating for this season—is approximately $211 Million, as per NHL figures.
While agreements on the make-whole issues would represent a significant step toward ending the lockout, the process of reaching a grand bargain remains complex.
An immediate drop to 50-percent rather than a gradual decrease in the players’ share would leave a limited amount of cap space the next couple of years for players with expiring contracts. Approximately 250 contracts are due to expire next July 1.
It is believed that the NHLPA is proposing a “soft landing” under which the players’ share would gradually diminish and reach 50 percent by Year 3 or 4 of the labor agreement.
Multiple sources told The Post that the NHLPA during Tuesday’s seven-hour session stated its opposition to all of the NHL’s proposed systems changes.
The league, we’re told, expressed willingness to negotiate these items in addition to, for the first time, amnesty buyouts.
Sources report that the NHL will not insist on contract terms limits but is committed to ending dramatically front-loaded deals that, in the league’s belief, have a deleterious effect on small-market clubs’ ability to compete. The NHL believes its proposed limit of year-to-year 5-percent variance within a contract would accomplish that objective.
The league does seem committed to turning Entry Level into a two-year contract and to pushing back unrestricted free agency by a year, to eight years of experience or to age 28.
Both parties are under increasing pressure from their own constituencies to make what would be the best possible deal so that a 62-to-66 game season would begin no later than Dec. 1.
* Henrik Lundqvist, who returned home to Sweden nearly three weeks ago, cannot play for his hometown Frolunda team because of the Swedish Elite League’s ban on allowing its clubs to sign locked-out NHL players to contracts with escape clauses.
“Nothing has changed. I’m not going to play for Frolunda unless things change,” The King wrote in an e-mail to The Post after using his Twitter account to express his frustration with the SEL policy. “Just trying to stay ready in case things change overseas.
“The longer I have to wait, obviously the more I want to join my brother [Joel] on Frolunda, but right now I’m sitting tight,” the 2011-12 Vezina winner continued. “I really hope we can find a solution with the NHL now. I’m so disappointed it has gone this far.”