Bettman puts lockout on CBA table

Enlarge Image

Darryl Dyck / the canadian press archives Donald Fehr floated the idea of continuing negotiations during training camp. (CP)

Enlarge Image

Kathy Willens / the associated press archives Commissioner Gary Bettman says there�s ample time before CBA deadline. (CP)

Thirty-seven days.

That's how much time remains for the NHL and its players' association to bridge a wide gap in collective bargaining negotiations or face another lockout.

Commissioner Gary Bettman made it clear during Thursday's bargaining session in New York that the league is prepared to lock out its players when the current agreement expires Sept. 15.

"I reconfirmed something that the union has been told multiple times over the last nine to 12 months," Bettman told reporters after a two-hour meeting. "Namely, that time is getting short and the owners are not prepared to operate under this collective bargaining agreement for another season, so we need to get to making a deal and doing it soon. And we believe there's ample time for the parties to get together and make a deal, and that's what we're going to be working towards."

The clock is ticking.

It makes next week's meetings in Toronto particularly important, with NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr expected to deliver the union's first official proposal Tuesday. It won't look anything like the one the NHL issued July 13.

The union found very little, if anything, it liked in that document, which called for lowering the players' share of revenue, introduced new contract restrictions and called for an extended entry-level system.

One change the players will seek is a broadening of the revenue-sharing system between teams. Fehr raised that issue Thursday during the talks at NHL headquarters as a way to illustrate why the NHLPA wasn't in favour of the league's proposal.

"We made a presentation directly related to the owners' proposal -- a revenue-sharing system as it would be combined with the player-compensation system that they had proposed," Fehr said.

"In the course of doing that, (we) indicated to them that for a couple of different reasons, it didn't look to us like it was the way to go.

"In particular, the biggest reason was that it seems to us, both overall and on a club-by-club basis, all of the revenue-sharing payments -- both the new ones and the existing ones -- would be paid for by player salary reductions."

That was by design.

Bettman indicated "fundamental economics" are more a key element to the negotiations than revenue-sharing.

"The fundamental proposal, our initial proposal, relates to the fact that we need to be paying out less in player costs," he said.

The NHL lost its entire 2004-05 season to a lockout and seems to be facing the growing possibility of another one. It would be the third on Bettman's watch.

Fehr has floated the idea of continuing negotiations while players report to training camp if a new deal isn't in place by Sept. 15.

"Under the law, if an agreement expires, that may give someone the legal ability to go on strike, or in this case, to impose a lockout," he said. "There's no requirement that they do so, and if nobody does anything, you (can) continue to work under the old conditions."

But with the NHL unwilling to do that, negotiations will need to pick up pace. Even though the sides have been meeting regularly since the end of June, very little progress has been made on what they refer to as the "core economic issues" -- how revenues should be divided.

"There's a meaningful gulf there," Fehr said. "I'll leave it at that for now."

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 10, 2012 C4