Both the NHL and players' union are feeling intense pressure
May 20, 2005
Don't look now but something positive may -- just may -- be happening on the National Hockey League labor front.
That is, if you measure minutes and hours of discussion without an obvious explosion.
Negotiators for the NHL and its players' association met on Tuesday and Wednesday in smaller groups.
Meetings continued through Friday morning giving meaning that a deal may be made.
My sources all tell me that it was a positive exchange of arithmetic.
Even better was the fact that Gary Bettman and his adversary Bob Goodenow had an opportunity to chat privately in Washington DC on Wednesday between time-outs during the steroids hearings.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that in this setting some good talk took place.
When the pair returned to New York on Thursday for what has been billed as THE meeting, they participated in a marathon exchange which lasted -- after a dinner-break -- well into the night.
Nobody with whom I've talked expected a spanking new CBA to emerge on Friday, but the seeds may well have been planted Thursday night.
The sides were talking past noon on Friday and then split up into private meetings. A league spokesman cautioned against runaway optimism. "I'm not expecting any monster event," he said in response to a question about the possibility of a press conference.
Nonetheless, there are many who believe that these intensive negotiations -- even though they seem like teeth-pulling -- eventually will have a positive result.
Former Atlanta Thrashers, Hawks, and Braves president Stan Kasten tells me that optimism is in order.
"I believe that there will be a deal in the next few weeks," says Kasten, who maintains close relations with both Bettman and Goodenow.
"All logic demands that they do a new CBA this Spring since they seem to be making progress on both a Cap and Linkage. If they don’t do it soon, they’ll be losing money every day. In other words, they have to make a deal."
The huge question throughout the three meeting days surrounded the element of pressure.
And which side was feeling it most intensively?
Some insiders believe that a significant segment of the 700-plus member union have become so frustrated with the deadlock that they cannot abide a second cancelled NHL campaign.
Eklund’s Hockey Report, a daily blog with close player affiliations, says "The common words from the players – almost to a man – is, ‘We gave up one season; we aren’t giving up a second, no matter what’."
Yet another arresting element surrounds Team Canada members, who were together as a group for the past few months. Insiders tell us that, "Getting a deal done" was a prime subject frequently discussed.
One whisper has it that some members returned from the World's tournament with a Plan B with which they were going to confront Goodenow.
Adding to the tension is the addition of two, long-absent members of the NHLPA executive board, Daniel Alfredsson and Arturs Irbe.
How much incentive ownership has to soften its demands is debatable.
Bettman has reiterated over and over that he will only make a deal that embraces fiscal sanity; something that has been missing from big-league hockey for a dozen years.
His board members second the motion.
That includes Board Chairman Harley Hotchkiss, Bruins’ owner Jeremy Jacobs – regarded as the top league power broker – as well as Hurricanes’ owner Peter Karmanos and his Predators’ counterpart, Craig Leipold.
Confronting them are threats from advertisers in both Canada and the United States that they will abandon the NHL unless a new CBA is hammered out by the end of June.
Additionally, ESPN is expected make a decision next month on whether it plans to exercise the option on its contract for the 2005-06 season.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking – which ticks off some NHL negotiators.
They point to the fact that last week’s meetings – as well as those on Tuesday and Wednesday – focused, in part, on findings of a report by former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt.
Released in February 2004, The Levitt Report said only 11 of 30 teams turned a profit in 2002-2003.
When I interviewed Levitt last Winter on MSG Network’s SportsDesk, he made it clear that he had offered to sit down with NHLPA leaders and thoroughly explain his methods, conclusions and answer any questions.
"They refused," said Levitt.
However, now the Report is being studied in depth by the union.
"What took them so long to get around to this?" an NHL negotiator asks out loud. "If they had done this when we had asked them, so much time would have been saved."
Who knows? Maybe the time of real deal-making is upon us. [We should be so lucky.]
Stay tuned.
