NEW YORK, 15 December 2004 — The NHL reportedly will reject the latest proposal from the players’ union that was meant to end the lockout and salvage the season.
Canadian sports network TSN reported yesterday that NHL executive vice president Bill Daly told the 30 team owners the league will turn down the union’s offer made last week that included a 24 percent rollback in salaries. TSN cited a memo from Daly to the owners.
The sides return to the bargaining table on Tuesday in Toronto for the second time in six days after three months of silence. The NHL is expected to provide a counteroffer to the 236-page proposal made by the players.
“We believe the union’s Dec. 9 CBA proposal, while offering necessary and significant short-term financial relief, falls well short of providing the fundamental systemic changes that are required to ensure that overall league economics remain in sync on a going-forward basis,” Daly said in the letter dated Sunday, TSN reported yesterday.
“While the immediate ‘rollback’ of 24 percent offered by the union would materially improve league economics for the 2004-05 season, there is virtually nothing in the union’s proposal that would prevent the dollars ‘saved’ from being redirected right back into the player compensation system, such that the league’s overall financial losses would approach current levels in only a matter of a couple of years.”
Daly declined comment on the memo, and wouldn’t confirm its existence.
Players and owners stayed apart from early September until last Thursday.
When the owners present their latest solution to end the 90-day old lockout it could determine whether the NHL will become the first North American league to lose an entire season due to a labor dispute.
Ted Saskin, the NHLPA senior director, wouldn’t respond to the TSN report.
“It would not assist the collective bargaining process to comment on excerpts from a leaked league document,” Saskin said. “We will comment on the NHL’s response to our proposal when it is finally delivered to us.”
The NHL hasn’t given the players’ association an offer since July 21 when it presented six possible concepts to provide a framework for the league’s first new collective bargaining agreement in a decade.
All six were formally rejected by the players on Aug. 17, and negotiations that followed over the next month failed to move the sides any closer to resolving philosophical differences.
Talks broke off on Sept. 9 when owners turned down an offer, and the lockout was imposed a week later by commissioner Gary Bettman.
The league wants cost certainty, a system that will provide a direct link between revenues and player costs. The players’ association says that is tantamount to a salary cap and unacceptable. The players’ latest proposal also contained a luxury tax, a revenue sharing plan, a lower cap on entry-level contracts and bonuses, and an offer to allow teams to take players to arbitration.
If Tuesday’s offer by owners features a salary cap, the season could be beyond salvaging.
Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk reportedly told Bettman that the salary rollback offered by players isn’t enough to end the lockout.
“It’s not a solution,” Melnyk, who pulled the Senators out of bankruptcy, told The Ottawa Sun. “It’s a one-shot deal that doesn’t work.”
In an effort to salvage the 2004-05 season, the union has more than doubled its concessions from the September proposal, which amounted to nearly $400 million.
Bettman and the owners have been adamant on installing a salary cap, which would prevent the league from incurring financial losses similar to the $224 million it claims to have lost last season.
With a 20-cent tax on the dollar for each team exceeding $45 million in payroll - a plan that increases to 60 cents on the dollar over $60 million — and a favorable arbitration system included in the proposal, the union believes it will help the owners save over $200 million next season.
It has been believed that the latest proposal was going to be the union’s last, as the season is dangerously close to being lost.
In 1994, the owner’s lockout - the second since Bettman took office as the NHL’s first commissioner — lasted 103 days before a new CBA was reached, with the campaign starting in late January and being limited to 48 games.
Teams have been given the authority by Bettman to clear dates in their home arenas up to 45 days in advance, effectively cancelling games through late January.
As of Monday, 721 games have been wiped off the slate, including the All-Star Game in Atlanta.
