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*Official* CBA Negotiations and Lockout Thread


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I sure hope so you are right. I have the same concern as Ossi.

If a team can trade away cap space what is to stop a team from conducting 'sign and trade' type deals? Let's pick on the Islanders here... The end of next year, Niederreiter's contract is up. They could strike a deal with another team to sign him for $5M and then ship him over, while keeping the cap space. Now the Islanders save $5M in real cash, while still using the cap hit to help them get to the floor.

Whatever deal they eventually land on, I am sure that the agents and the GMs will work overtime to find some loophole to twist the deal in their favour.

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Now you got a long time NHL pro who has been through every lockout speaking his mind. He is sick of Fehr and his crap.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=410028

At this point the union has a choice. Same as I have stated all along.

They either try to defend Fehr''s EGO as a negotiator and make a whole pile of guys waste an entire year of their already short careers...........

Or they fire Fehr or have him step down and get a hockey guy to step up to the plate with Bettman to hammer a fair deal out.

There is no other choice. Nobody in their right mind honestly thinks hiring Fehr was worth it anymore. The most the union can hope for is to try to salvage some credibility for the next CBA down the road.

Cut your losses now and live to fight another day.

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Now you got a long time NHL pro who has been through every lockout speaking his mind. He is sick of Fehr and his crap.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=410028

At this point the union has a choice. Same as I have stated all along.

They either try to defend Fehr''s EGO as a negotiator and make a whole pile of guys waste an entire year of their already short careers...........

Or they fire Fehr or have him step down and get a hockey guy to step up to the plate with Bettman to hammer a fair deal out.

There is no other choice. Nobody in their right mind honestly thinks hiring Fehr was worth it anymore. The most the union can hope for is to try to salvage some credibility for the next CBA down the road.

Cut your losses now and live to fight another day.

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What annoys me the most is that Bettman thinks we are stupid. He makes comments talking about how the players are responsible for the damage to the game that is happening right now. The indisputable fact (and I have plenty labour relations/arbitration experience to know this) is that locking out employees is almost never done unless the employees are engaging in some sort of partial strike/work stoppage (rotating strikes, work to rule, etc) that makes it too difficult to continue running the business effectively.

When you are actually wanting a deal, you simply keep working under the same agreement that has expired as you negotiate. That is standard LR practice. I know of many cases where they continue working a couple years without a new contract.

So any economic damage is being caused solely by the league. Even by talking about mounting damages to the game/league... Bettman is conceding that they would be better off financially to be playing right now. If that wasn't the case there couldn't be any damages. That is unlike the previous work stoppage when more than half the teams were better off by keeping their doors shut rather than playing games.

It is becoming clear that Bettman promised certain fairly dramatic things to the owners... and he is under pressure to keep those promises. Instead of taking a smaller win, he feels that doubling down is the best strategy. It is a vicious circle I have seen behind the scenes in negotiations. The longer it goes and the more it costs, the more pressure to get an even better deal in order to make up for those increasing losses and to make it seem worthwhile to have done through the labour strife in the first place.

The league clearly has a very specific number in mind for what they want their savings to be. They also still feel that they can get it. They also feel in control of the process enough that they can simply start the season when they think they have wrung out enough or that the math for losses starts outweighing what they can get at the table.

If I were Fehr, I would leverage the anger from today that the players have and deliver an ultimatum to the league to start putting the pressure onto them.

They simply have to say that the NHLPA will continue to negotiate until 01 December, after which time they will effectively cancel the season and be negotiating for the 2013-2014 season.

This allows their membership to seek employment elsewhere without having to worry about being obligated under IIHF rules to return to the NHL if a deal gets done this season. It also allows them to make plans for things like NHLPA mini-tours of the big hockey markets where they put on games/tournament similar to the Bieksa's buddies games on a regular basis (say weekly in each major market).... maybe giving half the proceeds to charity and half to the players. Nothing would freak out owners with big continuing overhead costs more than seeing other arenas filled with happy fans enjoying themselves. In this scenario you can also guarantee that broadcasters would jump on board to broadcast many of those games.

Players are playing and getting paid some, fans are seeing hockey, broadcasters are getting revenue... and the owners are left on the sidelines. All of a sudden you diverge "the game of hockey" from "the NHL".

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Another lost season has been looming since the day the NHLPA announced that they were going with Donald Fehr as their leader heading into the new CBA negotiations. The militants within the union won the day and I came to terms with the fact that there will be no season this year, hockey players being the most militant lot in professional sports.They will be in there grinding for every available nickel, just like every other CBA negotiation.

As North American pro athletes go, it's hard to like hockey players. They're just so damned greedy.

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I understood it as just the opposite, that teams would trade the player and their salary while retaining the cap hit. So the player can be moved with the cap hit staying behind, but their new team is still writing the cheque so to speak.

I do think you make a good point however, I think a team like Toronto would be willing to pay a substantial sum if we were to keep some of Luongo's CAP HIT. I can't see Gillis doing this however.

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The Owners have all the cards here, The only reason they don't cancel the season is because they are business men and any dollars they can make from salvaging this season will be great. Once reasons and costs a start to build then they will consider canceling the season.

Its my opinion that the NHLPA think that they are the product in this endevour, but they are not. They are but pawns and elite players are bishops. Many sons will hopefully play hockey when they get older and maybe play for the cup. Which they will only be able to do in ............ THe NHL~!

The product is the Jerseys, the Game, the Family outings, the Ice, the Logo, the Play offs, The Stanley Cup....but players come and go.

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I know you are frustrated. But your childish insults are irrelevant and are not helpful. You cannot see beyond a very limited viewpoint.

Eric coles counter complaining was littered with spite and insults. Telling the guy to 'keep his mouth shut' . To me it was so immature it wasnt worth mentioning. Its ridiculous.

If you settle down and quiet your mind, you will see one side whining and the other calling the shots.

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It depends on which proposal you are talking about. The original league one talked about just being able to retaining cap hit.... the NHLPA has suggested being able to trade either hit or salary to a max of 15% of the upper cap limit (they don't go into great detail, but they also refer to it as a Retained Salary Transaction which probably leads us to believe that they are not just talking about retaining cap space.

In the end it really only makes sense if you decouple the two and can trade either to some pre-determined maximum. It is the only way to spur trades, or there is no point in creating this clause. You need a trading partner who is short on cash and one who is short on cap space to make a deal happen under this type of scenario and need to be able to trade both back and forth as required.

I actually don't understand what the league is trying to accomplish by their version of cap retention only other than allowing bottom spending teams to get rid of veteran bad value contracts.... which doesn't often seem to be their biggest problem in competing (Lecavalier contract notwithstanding). No cap ceiling team could afford to retain cap hits for players they trade away... and they are generally not as worried about the actual salary dollars. Bottom end teams needing to retain cap hit to reach the cap floor would only be becoming less viable competitively, so why put in a cause that really only does that for them?

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Yes... truly, Edmonton has had a hard time signing Eberle and Hall to long term extensions. And Vancouver with the Sedins, Luongo and Kesler. Really a shame we couldn't lock them up. Don't forget Calgary with Iginla and Kiprusoff. Their team really fell apart when those two signed with Florida. And how cool would it have been if Ottawa had kept Spezza and Alfredsson together for a long time?

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2012 by team

Calgary - 5

Edmonton - 5

Montreal - 7

Ottawa - 4

Toronto - 3

Vancouver - 7

Winnipeg - 7

I didn't total up every team but it looked like most teams were in the 5-7 range with a few on the high (Rangers, Devils) or low (Kings, Flyers) end. At a quick glance 6 would seem to be the league average.

Overall though this would seem to be a silly argument regardless. There are so many factors in play when a free agent is selecting a destination (or not selecting, just hoping an offer comes to them).

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If strong revenue sharing is required to keep the bottom-earning teams afloat, and if a good chunk of the top-earning teams are located in Canada, what happens if the Canadian dollar dips back down around $.70USD for any length of time? I'm no financier, but it seems like the most recent CBA and its "record revenues" largely coincided with a time when the Canadian dollar was abnormally strong. If our dollar dips back down, who gets bled to pay for those bottom-earning teams that can't sell a $25 lower-bowl ticket?

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