*Official* CBA Negotiations and Lockout Thread

[Ossi Vaananen]

Ya, that's reasonable. I think it was said earlier, they are just ironing out the fine print. Damn these negotiations are long and stressful, and I'm just a fan.

[Pears]

John Shannon ‏@JSportsnet

Leagued proposed increasing "make whole" provision to 300 Million Dollars.

John Shannon ‏@JSportsnet

League proposed that UFA and Arbitration rules stayed same as last CBA...27 and 4 Years Pro.

John Shannon ‏@JSportsnet

League would not budge on Contract Term or Variance... 5 Years... 5%

John Shannon ‏@JSportsnet

There would an exception for signing your own Free Agent...7 Year Contracts.

[UFCanuck]

Huge News! Hopefully the PA responds well tomorrow and they don't get pissed about contract length limit.

7 years is fine, stars can only sign for 6 years in the NBA and they manage to do well.

Pierre LeBrun ‏@Real_ESPNLeBrun

NHL offered to raise Make Whole to $300 million today from $211 million. Players had asked for $383 in their offer two weeks ago. Middle?

[Edler's Mind Tricks]

The only change out of this whole thing that is going to be talked about by the casual fan (fan of NFL/MLB/NBA) is going to be he contract limits.

[canuck_trevor16]

I hope the PA do agree on what the NHL proposal and sign it......hope it will finish by Friday

[Smashian Kassian]

Wow now we are only 83 Million apart on the core ecomonic issue.

I never thought this day would come.

Now it is time to resolve the contract issue's and were almost set.

[DeNiro]

Apparently 50 million of the 300 million is set aside for the players pension fund.

There's always little fine details that may make this thing less attractive then it seems.

[Tangerines]

Good deal.. Now lets get this show on the road..

[Smashian Kassian]

Apparently 50 million of the 300 million is set aside for the players pension fund.

There's always little fine details that may make this thing less attractive then it seems.

[Kent.S]

@FriedgeHNIC: Twitter stream coming: that pension issue by mentioned by @TSNBobMcKenzie is a thorny one. Here's why: pension laws are different in US...

[DeNiro]

I know, there is never just a straight offer.

The players might not be enormously concerned however, they will get that money either way. But I don't know maybe it will be a huge deal but IMO they shouldn't make a major fuss over it.

[Ossi Vaananen]

The 50m set aside for pension actually covers what would normally come out of players' escrow. It's a positive for the players in as much as they don't have to worry about an additional levy to what they make until that 50m pension runs out.

The Canadian/US discrepancy could be a big issue in the future. It would be in the interest of most older free agents to finish their careers south of the border, especially if it's 20 grand a year difference. That has to be ironed out.

[WHL rocks]

I'm not surprised owners gave way on requiring longer term before UFA and arbitration rights. Frankly I expected this.

One of the major issues with old CBA was salary cap circumvention. Only way to stop that is with term limits and max 5% to 10% salary variance between years of SPC.

Wonder whats going on with the NHLPA's proposal to decouple from HRR .I never thought NHL was going to cancel the season over UFA at 27 years or at 28 years. But they might if union continues to demand decoupling from HRR.

Man how I'd love to be in that room to see all these billionaires at work. Hawks and Doves. The whole lot of them.

[theminister]

I would like to see the players push a little more to increase the pension fund for retired players.

I know they have proposed another 5 mil annually but standing on the shoulders of giants.... you know?

Some of these guys in their eighties are hurting and not because of their own fault.

[Smashian Kassian]

It seems to me like this whole time the NHL has been making offers that look good to the average person, but when you dig deeper you realize it's not that great.

And now the media conveniently gets a hold of their latest offer even though they've been completely silent up until now. To me that's not good news. It means the NHL is probably trying to get the public back on their side. If the players turn this down, fans will be saying that they are greedy again and turn against them.

This whole process has just been a gong show. You would think that none of these people had ever been involved in a professional labor negotiation before.

[Provost]

Still lots of room for this to fall apart, but that would definitely be the end of the season.

[theminister]

Still lots of room for this to fall apart, but that would definitely be the end of the season.

[The Bookie]

Fehr or Fehr not, there seems to be progress

The lengths to which the NHL owners will go to make NHL Players' Association executive director Donald Fehr seem unnecessary has become pretty clear over the last couple of days, a sure sign that he's done a pretty good job waiting out the league until it was time to play.

After not wanting to change anything in their proposal for the past six or seven weeks, the NHL suddenly decided to soften its position on some of the contracting issues in their first discussions with Fehr not present.

That's why the players came out of the Tuesday night marathon meetings feeling so positive. For the first time in a long while, they had someone with whom to negotiate, and that accounts for the flurry of activity that was ongoing in New York Wednesday with proposals and counter-proposals as they try to firm up so many of the loose ends that always exist with respect to CBA talks.

And that list is seemingly endless when you talk about all the areas of contractual disagreement regarding money and then go on to things like realignment, the Olympics, a World Cup possibility, right down to meal money and when a guy gets to have his own room on the road. For that reason, along with the tricky business trying to get all of it on to paper, there's likely to be quite a few bumps along the way.

Fehr, of course, was right back in negotiations Wednesday, albeit by iPhone or Blackberry, the same as Tuesday night, but the appearance of he (and Gary Bet-tman as well) as being an encumbrance was conveyed to anyone who wants to buy it.

And that's how good a job Fehr's done. In an interchange that was always going to be one way with the NHL taking and the players giving, Fehr at least restrained his troops long enough for the league to move off its take-it-or-leave-it position. And in that sense it might be said he's done a decent job frustrating the usual Bettman strategy of waiting while the players negotiate against themselves. The players still did it twice to themselves when they submitted proposals, but for the most part Fehr was able to restrain his abundance of doves.

That softening on the part of the league came because it's time to wrap this thing up and the players agreeing to the meeting with just the owners present was their opportunity.

There's been enough damage done and everybody knows it. The profitable teams that make this game work as a business were starting to get antsy and ultimately they began to make their feelings clear. They didn't speak at the Board of Governors meeting Wednesday as that was just more or less an update with Bettman's heir apparent Bill Daly giving most of the talk and chairman of the board Jeremy Jacobs filling people in on what had taken place the night before, since he was in the room.

The owners of the wealthy teams want to get in a decent-length of season (56-60 games) and the one thing that the commissioner has never wanted over the entire length of his career is to upset them to the point where they began to talk among themselves about issues no matter what they might be.

And the sense was it may be getting to that point.

So things finally got serious and Wednesday night when talks ended at 1 a.m. Eastern time, a whole range of issues had been discussed with the league sticking closely to length of term on contracts and how those contracts are to be structured monetarily but willing to give on other issues. They threw in some more money on the "make-whole provision" and exchanged ideas in some often tense negotiations.

The sides will meet internally again Thursday morning and get back at it, albeit with nobody really knowing who's going to be directly involved.

According to insiders there were many tense exchanges, as one might expect, and Vancouver's Manny Malhotra was front and centre right until the bitter end with just three players remaining when all was said and done, again, all presumably getting advice from the Fehr brothers.

The league would also like to stop the significant payouts to very young players like Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin and many others, preferring instead to give that loot to guys who have been around longer and proven themselves. How or if they're able to do that remains to be seen.

Suffice it to say that at long last the players were sufficiently enthused going into the late meetings Wednesday night to feel that if they surrender something, the league will finally give them something in return.

And that's all they've ever asked for in these talks, Fehr or no Fehr.

[DeNiro]

According to insiders there were many tense exchanges, as one might expect, and Vancouver's Manny Malhotra was front and centre right until the bitter end with just three players remaining when all was said and done, again, all presumably getting advice from the Fehr brothers.

[johngould21]

I hope the PA do agree on what the NHL proposal and sign it......hope it will finish by Friday