LA Times: NHL-NHLPA Agree in Principle

AGonzalez11 · July 7, 2005

NHL on Its Way Back

League, players' association agree in principle on a new collective bargaining agreement that includes a hard salary cap.

By Helene Elliott, Times Staff Writer

The NHL and the players' association have agreed in principle on a new collective bargaining agreement that will feature a hard salary cap linked to 54% of league revenue, a 24% rollback of existing contracts and qualifying offers, and a provision that will limit the salary of any single player to 20% of the team cap figure in any year, sources familiar with the labor negotiations said Wednesday.

The agreement, which is expected to be announced next week, also includes an NBA-style escrow provision under which 15% of each player's paycheck will go into an escrow account until revenue is calculated after each season. If league-wide spending on salaries exceeds 54% of revenue, the difference between the salaries paid and the negotiated percentage will be paid to teams from the escrow account. If teams spend less than 54%, the escrow money will revert to players.

Negotiators are estimating revenues will be $1.8 billion next season, down from $2.1 billion in 2002-03. The salary cap will be $37 million and won't include medical and dental benefits and pension payments. The floor will be about $24 million.

The league also agreed to let players represent their homelands at the Turin Olympics next February and will take an 18-day break to accommodate players' travel and participation in the Games.

The All-Star game will be dropped next season, mollifying owners who opposed repeated interruptions.

A source also said each team will have an equal chance in the lottery for the No. 1 pick in this year's entry draft. Canadian forward Sidney Crosby, touted as the next Wayne Gretzky, will probably be the top prize.

Overall, the agreement is a resounding victory for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who locked players out Sept. 15 in an effort to bring about sweeping economic changes and achieve cost certainty for owners. The average NHL salary rose from $730,000 in 1994-95 to $1.83 million in 2003-04, but Bettman contended that revenue did not keep pace and that teams lost a collective $1 billion in the decade preceding the lockout.

The NHL, which became the first major professional sports league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute, will become the last of the major North American leagues to adopt salary controls.

The agreement will be presented to the 10-member NHL executive committee in New York on Monday, and the Board of Governors will rubber-stamp it late next week.

Players will debate and vote at a meeting that could be contentious; if they approve, a 10-day period will begin for teams to sign players they drafted in 2003 and other players on their reserve lists. The season probably would start in early to mid-October.

King President Tim Leiweke, a member of the NHL executive committee, declined to discuss specifics of the negotiations. "I do think the union and the league have made a lot of progress," he said. "They're not there, but hopefully, they'll be there in the very near future."

The largest unresolved issue, a source said, is the disposition of contracts for the 2004-05 season. The NHLPA wants obligations for the 2004-05 season to be respected, and the NHL opposes that but might yield, a source said.

The new deal has no luxury tax but addresses revenue sharing through a complex formula under which the top 10 revenue-earning teams will give a percentage of their revenue to small-market teams at the conclusion of each season.

Salary arbitration will be conducted "baseball style," with each side presenting a figure and the arbitrator obligated to pick one figure or the other. Provisions will allow teams to walk away from a specified number of awards. Also, the minimum age to qualify for unrestricted free agency will be 31 in the first year of the deal, 30 the following year and 28 for the remaining four years.

In another key change, players' performance bonuses will be restricted according to a standardized formula. Criteria such as points, ice time and plus/minus ratio will govern bonuses available to forwards. Another set of standards will apply to bonuses for defensemen, and a third set will determine bonuses for goaltenders.

As expected, earnings will be limited for entry-level players. They will be subject to salary limits for their first four seasons instead of three, as in the old agreement, and their maximum earnings will be $850,000.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-nhl7ju...=la-home-sports

I'm waiting for Bob Mckenzie's confirmation before I get too excited -- we've all seen the how bad the media can screw up trying to get the inside "scoop". I guess you could say I'm "cautiously optimistic"

Accord · July 7, 2005

HARD CAP? HOLY BAJESES, I didn't hear anything about that. WOW.

Nugget · July 7, 2005

About time!! I missed watching the NHL in HD.

Beinfest4Prez · July 7, 2005

Let the party begin!

Ramp · July 7, 2005

bring me Crosby

D-Train35 · July 7, 2005

I'm pretty sure it is close to done, but not everything in that LA Times article may be true.

Lockout not settled yet

TSN.ca Staff

7/7/2005 9:05:51 AM

The NHL lockout continues to dwindle down to its final days and hours, but the new deal between the NHL and NHL Players' Association is not yet done, despite a report in the Los Angeles Times suggesting an agreement has been reached.

"It's an inaccurate report," an NHLPA spokesman told TSN.

This long and drawn out process won't actually be complete until every "i" has been dotted and every "t" has been crossed and representatives of the NHL and NHLPA sign off on the agreement, pending ratification.

And that moment, sources tell TSN, is definitely not going to happen today. The earliest projections of when that might occur are some time this weekend, although sources close to the NHLPA are suggesting it could easily carry into next week. The NHL has been targeting this weekend as the wrap up and even scheduled an NHL board of governors' executive committee meeting on Monday in New York City.

But that executive committee meeting will only happen as scheduled if the agreement is reached before then.

?

It should, however, be duly noted that the NHL and NHLPA have reached agreement on most, if not all, critical issues in the new CBA and these final days of meetings in New York are all about the lawyers doing their job vis a vis language and legalities. But until such time that both sides sign off on the document, pending ratification, there's no deal. It's an all or nothing process.

The Times reported some details of what it believes will be in the new accord. One of them was that when the NHL entry draft lottery is held to determine order of selection that every team will have an equal chance -- one in 30 -- of getting the first overall pick and the right to choose phenom Sidney Crosby.

Sources tell TSN that when the lottery is conducted, it will be a slightly weighted lottery, giving the teams that have performed poorly over the last three or four seasons a slightly better chance than those who have performed well.

Link: http://tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?id=129820

Lowell#1Fan · July 7, 2005

YAHOO!!! *Starts to celebrate* :arms :arms Lets Go Panthers!! (I just heard it from Neil Rodgers! I sure most of u guys know him)

July 7, 2005

This is gonna shorten some of the highlights during the NFL season.

:plain

Passion · July 7, 2005

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=2102235

- The NHL and the players' association are closing in on a new collective bargaining agreement, but both sides denied a report Thursday that a deal had been reached.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the sides had completed negotiations to end the lockout that wiped out all of last season. But the league and the union said that is premature.

"The report is inaccurate," players' association spokesman Jonathan Weatherdon said.

The league and the union have been at the bargaining table every week for the past few months and have indicated they are close to a deal. The sides resumed negotiations in New York on Monday, and those talks continued Thursday.

"The media report that the NHL and the NHLPA have an agreement in principle is simply not true," Bernadette Mansur, the NHL vice president of communications, said in an e-mail statement.

The newspaper, citing anonymous sources close to the negotiations, said the agreement would feature a hard salary cap linked to 54 percent of league revenue, a 24 percent rollback of existing contracts and qualifying offers. It would also include a provision that would limit the salary of any player to 20 percent of the team cap figure in any season.

The salary cap would be $37 million and wouldn't include medical and dental benefits and pension payments, the Times reported.

The newspaper added that details were to be presented to the NHL executive committee in New York on Monday and that players would meet to decide whether to approve the deal.

"There is no BOG [board of governors] meeting scheduled at this time," Mansur said.

Under the reported agreement, the league's All-Star Game would be dropped next season and players would be allowed to represent their home countries at the Turin Olympics in February, the Times said. Each team would also have an equal chance in the lottery for the No. 1 pick in this year's entry draft.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the hockey season Feb. 16 because of the lockout, which started Sept. 16. The NHL became the first major pro sports league in North America to lose an entire season to a labor dispute.

Mark · July 7, 2005

aw, rats.

Oh well.

Accord · July 7, 2005