*Official* CBA Negotiations and Lockout Thread

[BoKnows53]

The NHL has a date for sure set for when they go all in. They dont feel the pressure yet. Much like studying for an exam. The closer it gets, the more pressure builds which leads to higher focus.

[BoKnows53]

Dp.

[The Bookie]

Uncomfortably NUMB

There was a point Thursday night -- not long after Don Fehr and his lieutenants ambled up on stage in New York for a second time and Gary Bettman's face took on various shades of red and purple -- when the 2012-13 NHL season appeared to be deader than dead.

Oh, certainly things could still get uglier, especially if Bettman officially pulls the pin on the hand grenade the league and the NHL Players' Association are tossing back and forth.

But through a lockout that is now into its 84th day, Thursday night's bizarre and very public sequence of events -- when Fehr hinted an agreement was close, reversed his stance after a phone message from the league and Bettman went ballistic in yanking the deal -- might have been the low point in this silly mess.

Fascinating theatre? Maybe for awhile. And then the realization that this thing is in a serious nosedive after a couple of days of optimism and progress.

"I didn't plan on it, but I turned to it and I was watching it for about an hour and-a-half," said Bryan Little Friday, not long after skating at the MTS Iceplex with a handful of Winnipeg Jets teammates. "I was pretty much glued to it and was interested to see what both sides had to say.

"It was strange to watch that, to be honest. It didn't really seem like it was organized. Don was up there talking and within minutes he got that phone call and came on and it was pretty much downhill and all negative from there.

"It dragged on and I turned the channel after awhile because Gary was talking for awhile. After it started to get negative I didn't care what he said, I just wanted to turn off the TV and go to bed."

That "wake-me-when-this-is-over" sentiment is held by many now, especially after Thursday's dramatics and histrionics. This was old back in September when the lockout started.

But as much as Thursday seemed apocalyptic, the sun did indeed rise Friday morning. And now that some raw emotions have been vented, the question now remains as to how to get the negotiations back on the rails.

Yes, believe it or not, some optimism remains -- at least from the players camp.

"Hopefully today brings some new things and we can move on from there," said Jet centre Jim Slater Friday. "Going from (Thursday) night, it didn't look good. But the guys here, we're still positive we're going to get something done at some point... maybe not here in the next little while but hopefully down the road.

"It's just a weird situation. Just listening to media talk, this could be one of the most awkward negotiations going around in any league. But you can't plan on how negotiations are going to go. It's tough. This is the first one I've been a part of and it definitely seems like it's a real tough one. You've just got to put your boots on and keep going."

Slater and Little were the two Jets who braved the media gauntlet at the Iceplex on Friday to offer up their take. They still have faith in their union leadership, still are convinced the foundation of an agreement is in place and that a season will be played.

But there was also this: A real sense that the posturing and efforts to win over public sentiment has become an absolute, complete waste of time.

"Enough of the PR battle. We've got to get something going here," said Slater. "It's not about who looks better in the fans' eyes or the media's eyes. Who knows what happened there (Thursday)? Obviously something did.

"It's both sides. There's not winners here. Obviously, the players want to play and fans want to see the players play. Any time you're not doing that and you're missing games you're letting fans down, both the owners and players.

"You can't take back what happened, you've got to get better and get something done. That's the main focus here. What's happened to this point is over, we can't change it. Hopefully both sides can get back to the table and be talking and get negotiating again."

[Bodee]

If my math is right, there's a little thing called the 100th anniversary of the NHL coming up in 2017 that's six years (including this year) from now. The NHL doesn't want anything to get in the way of that season. If the players feel they haven't gotten a fair shake, they can opt out at 6 and hold the NHL over the proverbial barrel to get a better deal.

Remember, the NHL could have opted to extend the CBA through this season but came back early and said they wouldn't do so. That was well before the decision to lockout and while I don't think playing without a CBA would have worked, extending the CBA and continuing to negotiate would have.

The players don't have a lot of power in most other situations, and the NHL is the last to want to give them any leverage more than they have already. Optically, it's not good for the players to want the shorter option considering fans would rather have the next CBA up for negotiations later rather than sooner, but they'd like to feel they won't just get shafted again if the owners still want to say they didn't get enough this time around.

[Boudrias]

"NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said Friday that he is out of ideas on how to get negotiations back on track to save the hockey season".

What the hell is this idiot getting paid to do exactly?I,m getting real sick of all this s$&t.All the media bs and such. IMHO Bettman and Fehr should be taken out of the negotiation equation entirely,these two a$&clowns would lie in a court of law if they had a chance.They're giving this negotiation no credibility whatsoever.Its all just how can I spin this and make the other party look like the villain..........f$&king pathetic

[Bertuzzi Babe]

All the signs are there that this lockout is on the verge of being over and a resolution in place.

Expect the talks to get more frequent and positive and an agreement to be signed in under 2 weeks.

There's absolutely no chance in hell that this lockout ends this NHL season.

I'd wager every last dollar of my retirement savings on that.

Hockey begins Dec.1 or even earlier. Quote me on that!

[stexx]

can anyone explain why fehr would be addressing the CAW on the state of the lockout? Is this a strategy brainstorming session for the PA with another powerful union? i am confused.

"

Donald Fehr has plans to speak today about the current state of the NHL lockout.

The executive director of the NHL Players' Association is scheduled to address a meeting of Canadian Auto Workers union delegates today in Toronto at approximately 2:30pm et."

as per tsn story, http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=411235

[Cromeslab]

can anyone explain why fehr would be addressing the CAW on the state of the lockout? Is this a strategy brainstorming session for the PA with another powerful union? i am confused.

"

Donald Fehr has plans to speak today about the current state of the NHL lockout.

The executive director of the NHL Players' Association is scheduled to address a meeting of Canadian Auto Workers union delegates today in Toronto at approximately 2:30pm et."

as per tsn story, http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=411235

[poetica]

....

This style of position based bargaining where one side makes outrageous demands and then plays all bombastic and annoyed hasn't been used in real professional bargaining in decades... only when you really don't want a deal.

...

From listening to the language, the league is using old school position based bargaining and Fehr who is an actual professional negotiator is using position based bargaining. He keeps saying "we are trying to figure out what the real issues are"...

[poetica]

can anyone explain why fehr would be addressing the CAW on the state of the lockout? Is this a strategy brainstorming session for the PA with another powerful union? i am confused.

[Boudrias]

can anyone explain why fehr would be addressing the CAW on the state of the lockout? Is this a strategy brainstorming session for the PA with another powerful union? i am confused.

"

Donald Fehr has plans to speak today about the current state of the NHL lockout.

The executive director of the NHL Players' Association is scheduled to address a meeting of Canadian Auto Workers union delegates today in Toronto at approximately 2:30pm et."

as per tsn story, http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=411235

[poetica]

@jonasTSN1050: Standing ovation for Don Fehr following CAW speech.

[poetica]

NHL fears players will win again

The emerging truth — the NHL is the clubhouse leader in emphasizing new truths and obscuring the old — is unavoidably this:

Gary Bettman did not beat Bob Goodenow in the last labour dispute.

In fact, in the long view, he probably lost.

There can be no other explanation for the hard line that the commissioner, and his obedient NHL owners have unnecessarily drawn in the sand during the current work stoppage. (And let's abandon that term, right now. “Work stoppage” suggests that it was the idea of those actually doing the work to have it stop.)

Remember, always, that NHL hockey players are not on strike. They are locked out.

And they have, in proposal and counterproposal, offered many more concessions the past two months than have the owners. We're talking real concessions here, meaning retreats from ground you already won and held; not fake concessions, meaning retreats from ground you would like to have won and held.

Bettman and Bill Daly are the absolute masters of the latter, and it's wearing thin. To the point of transparency.

After all, but giggling out loud that they had a knockout victory in the lockout of 2005 — the media, public and even players themselves referred to it as a players' loss — only a few years later, the league has been acting as if that agreement was some kind of all-purpose devil from the beginning, favouring the players far too much for anyone's own good, including the players'.

So, if continuing under that 2005 agreement jeopardized the owners' financial health and inordinately promoted the players' financial health, as Bettman claims, then what was the ugly 15-month process that produced it?

A loss for the owners — it says not only here, but also in the speech bubbles over Bettman's and Daly's heads.

And that was with heavy principles involved — such as salary cap and revenue — against Bob Goodenow who was in the midst of dwindling players' support. Not against a guy who once sent major league baseball limping out of a $280 million dollar collusion-case settlement as Donald Fehr did.

So if the owners caved in to end the 1994 lockout, despite Bettman's urging to the contrary; and we're now figuring out that they tied, or even lost, the 2005 lockout because of the unintended consequences of that CBA, it casts a different light on the uncharacteristically overt emotions that the NHL commissioner and owners displayed earlier this week.

That wasn't exasperation at talks breaking down that made those voices crack and nearly break.

It was fear. (without the ‘h').

Fear of losing yet again. Fear of having their self-satisfaction revealed as truly baseless, a modern-day emperor's new clothes. Fear of becoming the only big sport to strike off a championship season twice. Fear of no one outside of Canada caring, which is one of the NHL's major paranoias.

Fear of someone deep on the inside pointing out that the only real constant in the three NHL lockouts (there are all new players, a new union head and about two dozen new NHL owners since the 1994 lockout) was the one man who should have been most motivated to prevent them.

And a fear of memory. The NHL prefers us not to remember anything before today, because it always comes back to haunt them.

Like voting unanimously, and with great public flourish, that Jim Balsillie didn't have the character to be an NHL owner, then expressing shock and anger that newspapers like The Spec would recall how many NHL owners have had the character to be accepted into the owners' lodge, but not to stay out of jail.

Like their constant insincere references, until the final year of the CBA, to the players as “partners,” a word that has not been uttered in public since.

Like their smug, regularly-repeated, mantra during the Phoenix fiasco (which is still a fiasco, incidentally): “We don't start fights …. but we end them.”

Oh really? Who started this one? Did the players themselves take off their skates in September, walk to the hardware and purchase the padlocks for which they have no key?

And who's ending this one? The owners and NHL with their if-you-don't-come-exactly-to-where-we're-standing-you're-not-moving-at-all outlook?

Larry Tannenbaum, a man who has negotiated in the hard-ass world of multi-million-dollar construction, but who, on cue, professed to be taken aback by what went on behind closed NHL-NHLPA doors? Other owners, who suggested the players come back to bargaining again without their leader and major legal counsel?

We will also point out that the NHL keeps wanting to limit their description of players to “labour.” That, again is true, but not the whole truth. This isn't the mill or a shoe factory.

It's the entertainment industry, where the actors (in this case players) aren't just the workers, they are the very product themselves. It is the players, and only the players, we watch and pay in one form or another to see.

Take whatever side you want on this, especially if you just want NHL hockey back, or rest your head on the essentially useless pillow that both sides are to blame. They may be both to blame — (Who isn't when every man involved, including and perhaps especially the owners, makes more than anyone morally deserves to?) — but the blame is not equal.

[poetica]

Interesting quote from the article "Lost season looms as NHL talks break down" from Ryan Miller talking about why the players are holding out against a 5-year contract term limit:

“By limiting years of a contract and variance in the level of salary year to year, the player hurt is any player temporarily caught in between what will become a two-tier salary structure,” Miller wrote. “It is true a vast majority of players will never use the right to sign for up to five years. That is not even close to a point in this argument. It is about what money is available to the biggest group in the sport and maintaining NHL hockey as a long-term career option.

“A lot has been said about the stars being greedy. But this is an issue that directly affects my brother [Detroit third-line forward Drew Miller], and I am absolutely thinking about players like him and the good of the game. ... It makes average player careers shorter, so why as a group of players would we accept to accelerate that or create a lever to accelerate that in an agreement that would last 10 years? We don’t want to do it.”

[Hobble]

Why would a 5-year cap on contract length shorten players careers?!?

[Shift-4]

Why would a 5-year cap on contract length shorten players careers?!?

[DeNiro]

Why would a 5-year cap on contract length shorten players careers?!?

[DeNiro]

I think the fair deal for both sides would be to have a 6-7 year max with the ability to have an option year at the end.

That way if a player isn't performing at the end of their contracts, the team can dump them in the final year. But if they are performing you can add on a bonus year at the end. Essentially making it a 7-8 year max, with the final year being up to management whether they want to keep them or not.

[poetica]

Why would a 5-year cap on contract length shorten players careers?!?

[poetica]

For anyone interested, there's a new article up about Fehr's speech to the CAW. Here's a selected quote:

“All I can tell you is there had been some movement,” Fehr said in a media scrum after his speech. “We responded with some movement, we think we’re done on the dollars or close to it. … It seemed to me that we ought to be able to move forward and finish things off (but) they have not indicated a willingness to move forward.”

Campoli said he feels the players are doing their part in the negotiations, but that it’s difficult when what they offer “gets thrown back in your face.”

“It’s not hard to see who’s been taking the steps in the right direction,” Campoli added. “After being there and going to meetings, we made a step in their direction to make it close. … to have it come to a halt is just disappointing.”

When talking about what happens from this point on in negotiations, Fehr said, ”you keep negotiating and see what happens. … The players have never made threats or threatened to walk out.

“My job is to lead (the players) … their job is to make decisions on an informed basis.”

Fehr explained that with all the backlash both sides have received during the lockout, he is concerned about the fans.

“You always have to be worried about the fans. If you’re not you have to be more perceptive,” Fehr said. “The response we’ve had from fans has been very gratifying and supportive.”

During his speech and the scrum, Fehr would not comment on any specific details concerning CBA proposals.