However it ends, today is a key date on the timeline of NHL Lockout III, with the next scrapping of games likely to scuttle the entire 2012-13 season.
“I don’t want to characterize what today’s cancellations mean or don’t mean,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Associated Press in an email. “I will stand on the announcement that was made.”
Following the league’s cancellation yesterday of games through Jan. 14, the locked-out players today are expected to authorize, though not require, their union’s withdrawal from collective bargaining negotiations with the NHL.
Their vote to authorize the Players Association to issue a “disclaimer of interest” is expected to be overwhelmingly approved by the rank-and-file in five-day voting that ends today. The union would then have until Jan. 2 to file its disclaimer of interest, renouncing its role as a step toward dissolving itself.
The players would then be entitled, individually, to sue the league under antitrust law.
In a preemptive strike last week, the NHL asked a federal court to declare its lockout legal, and also filed an unfair labor practices charge against the union with the National Labor Relations Board.
Daly told The Post this week he believes the disclaimer of interest is a “card” it can “play” in negotiations. Daly said the sides haven’t been in contact with each other yesterday and no new talks are planned. There haven’t been negotiation since Dec. 6 when talks broke down after a few days of bargaining.
Under Bob Goodenow in the prior two lockouts, the union did not file a disclaimer of interest, nor decertify itself.
It is believed yesterday’s cancellation of games through Jan. 14 will be the last before the NHL wipes out the entire 2012-13 season. The NHL and Players Association settled the 1994-95 lockout Jan. 11 for a 48-game season, while the 2004-05 season finally was cancelled Feb. 19, 2005.
More than 50 percent of the schedule has been lost, and the rest is now in great danger, too. So far, 625 regular-season games have been called off, including nearly 100 in the announcement made yesterday — the 96th day of the NHL’s lockout.
The New Year’s Day Winter Classic and the All-Star Game also have been lost.