Well Its Over.......so what

well the Players Union and Owners reached a tentative deal to settle the Lockout that has now cost the league over half the season.

click for Full Details Here from NHL.com

NEW YORK -- The National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association reached agreement on the framework of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement early Sunday morning.

After a marathon 16-plus hour negotiating session at the Sofitel Hotel that began Saturday afternoon, the sides announced an agreement in principle shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday.

The League did not announce the start date of the season or the number of games each team will play. Those details will be announced soon.

The deal, agreed to at approximately 4:40 a.m., was announced jointly by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr in the same hotel conference room where the negotiations were conducted with the assistance of Scot Beckenbaugh, Deputy Director for Mediation Services for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

"Don Fehr and I are here to tell you that we have reached an agreement on the framework of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the details of which need to be put to paper," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "We have to dot a lot of I's and cross a lot of T's. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the basic framework has been agreed upon. We have to go through a ratification process and the Board of Governors has to approve it from the League side and, obviously, the players have to approve it as well. We are not in a position to give you information right now about schedule, when we are starting. It's early in the morning and we have been at this all day and all night, obviously. But, we will be back to you very shortly, hopefully, later today with more information in that regard."

Fehr, meanwhile expressed an eagerness for his constituency to get back to playing hockey after a negotiation that stretched across 113 days.

"Any process like this in the system we have is difficult; it can be long," Fehr said. "I've said repeatedly throughout this process, somebody would say, 'What do you see ahead?' And, the answer was, 'You get up tomorrow and you try to find a way to do it and you keep doing that until you find a way to succeed.

"As Gary just indicated, we have the framework of a deal. We have to do the legal work and we have to do the constituent-communication work. At least, from my [standpoint], and I'm sure Gary's too, we need to let them know the details before we tell all of you. Having said that, hopefully, we're at a place where all those things will proceed fairly rapidly and with some dispatch and we'll get back to what we used to call business as usual as fast as we can."

Beckenbaugh, who took part in these negotiations at three different junctures of the overall process, worked with both sides from this past Wednesday until the deal was finalized Sunday morning. Commissioner Bettman praised the work of Beckenbaugh and thanked the mediator for the role he played in the potential settlement.

"I want to recognize the extraordinary contribution that my colleague, Scot Beckenbaugh, Deputy Director for Mediation Services, made in providing herculean assistance of the highest caliber to the parties throughout the most critical periods in the negotiations," FMCS Director George Cohen said as part of a statement.

The new CBA, which still must be drafted and formerly approved by both parties, would replace the agreement that expired Sept. 15.

More to come.

NHL Labor Talks Update August 28th 2012

0
inShare

NHLPA boss Donald Fehr still believes the season should go on as scheduled even without a new bargaining agreement.

Kathy Willens/AP

NEW YORK (AP) -- The NHL issued a new proposal to the players' association Tuesday as a lockout looms next month.

And at least one side is happy about it.

"We believe," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, "that we made a significant, meaningful step."

Time will tell, but at least NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr and his players have another proposal - the league's second this summer - to digest. The two sides will meet again on Wednesday at the NHL offices.

HACKEL: Why owners oppose revenue sharing

HACKEL: Why players oppose 50-50 revenue split

A less optimistic Fehr labeled the offering "a proposal that we intend to respond to." Meanwhile, Bettman called it a "counterproposal" to the offer the players presented to the league earlier this month. In that proposal, the players had offered to take two-, four- and six-percent reductions in Hockey Related Revenue for the first three years of a new collective bargaining agreement.

"We felt in order to move the process along," Bettman said, "we tried to address the fundamental issues."

Neither the league nor the players would divulge specifics of the proposal, although Montreal forward Mathieu Darche said he was "encouraged."

"We had a lot of people at the office evaluating the proposal," said Darche, who estimated he received "20, 25 texts" from players asking for details of the different proposal. "It didn't take them five minutes to write it and it won't take us five minutes to read it."

The current CBA expires Sept. 15 and the NHL has said it will lock the players out if a new deal isn't reached.

Limiting the personnel at the bargaining table in the hope of making progress, only Fehr and his top assistant, Steve Fehr, met with Bettman and NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly on Tuesday morning when the proposal was issued. Traditionally, several players have joined in on the talks.

Tuesday's session was the second time in six days that the meeting was limited to just the four executives. They met for two hours last Wednesday in Toronto, exclusively. That meeting was to discuss the state of the negotiations.

"We don't know the answer to that," Fehr said when asked if the smaller meetings jumpstarted the negotiating process. "If it doesn't (work), we'll find another way."

After the sessions in Toronto, the return to New York was a strange one for both sides. Negotiations resumed in the morning, as planned, but then took a slight break while Fehr left the building. Upon exiting, he told reporters talks had paused just for a bit.

"I think the appropriate thing to do under the circumstances is go back (to our office). We've got constituents and so on," Fehr said at the time. "And so we'll see you later on I'm sure."

He eventually returned to confirm the proposal, and was joined by player representatives this time. Fehr was accompanied by Darche, San Jose defenseman Douglas Murray and Winnipeg defenseman Ron Hainsey.

Tuesday's session was billed as "core economic," and if nothing else, the players now have more to work with.

DATER: Lockout timeline -- 2004 vs. now

"I'm trying to get us on to the same page," Bettman said. "I'm trying to get us on to a common language."

But, clearly, he knows what he's up against. In fact, following the session, Bettman said he wouldn't "feel better about this process until it is successfully completed." He defined successful completion as having "a collective bargaining agreement."

Time's running out for that.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/hockey/nhl/08/28/cba-talks.new-york.ap/index.html#ixzz24tfamZZ6