Facing a lockout a month from today, the NHL Players Association voted last weekend to fix the oft-disparaged salary cap, rather than blow it up, The Post has learned.
Given the choice of demanding an end to the salary cap, negotiating against the NHL’s proposal or repairing the current system, the Players’ Association chose the final option via conference call.
Commissioner Gary Bettman, who will have difficulty trashing the salary cap system he demanded and won in the 2005 lockout, said he hoped the NHL can respond today to the union proposal, which is for a three-year deal with an option provision.
“It’s clear they didn’t put it together in an hour or two,” Bettman told reporters in Toronto. “We’re going to need a little bit of time to evaluate it and understand it.”
Union head Donald Fehr said his proposal would be good for hockey.
“The proposal the players made, once implemented, can produce a stable industry that can give us a chance to move beyond the recurring labor strife that has plagued the NHL the last two decades,” Fehr said.
Fehr said the players made a concession on their share of revenue. It was widely reported it would be a straight cut from the current 57-percent level, but it’s really a limit of a two-, four- and six-percent share of the annual revenue increases. The players have an optional fourth year, reverting to 57 percent.
In its July 13 proposal, the NHL asked for $450 million in player salary cuts, which would fully finance all “revenue sharing,” which would no longer be anything of the kind, since big money teams would not have to contribute to helping their smaller brethren.
Fehr yesterday said his side’s concession on their share of revenue would cost the players $465 million over three years, if growth continues as it has under the current CBA.
On Thursday, Bettman confirmed the owners intend to lock out the players when the current CBA expires Sept. 15. Bettman has presided over two previous lockouts, losing 36 games in 1994, and all 82 in the scrubbed 2004-05 season.
Fehr, the former long-time head of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, is forewarned of the hazards of bargaining against Bettman, who gained a 24-percent salary cut and the salary cap in the lockout that saw former union head Bob Goodenow deposed in 2005.
Fehr has said the league’s proposal was more of a laundry list of take-backs than a comprehensive system, and there were no financial improvements for the players in the league’s proposal.