You may have had a strange feeling in the early Monday evening.
Let us call it the promise of industrial peace in our time.
If you are not middle-aged or have been very interested in labor negotiations before primary school, you have not experienced this with the kind permission of the NHL. Before this announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding to renew the 2025-26 season agreement, if ratified, you knew the 2012-13 lockout … and the 2004-05 lockout that wiped out the entire season … and the 1994-95 suspension Lockout … and the 1992 strike.
This contested past provides a context that is as important to this agreement as our uncertain present that underpins the new deal. The transitional rules and a four-year extension of the CBA aim to share the economic problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic until more prosperous days return.
Let us say that leadership looks like this in difficult times.
Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr found reasonable solutions to common problems without resorting to the hostility or magnificence that these negotiations are normally known for. They and their respective leadership teams began meeting each other out of the spotlight last summer before recalibrating on the fly and putting the framework for this deal in a health crisis that poses a significant threat to their industry and many others.
This required the CBA to be negotiated in parallel to agreements that regulate intensive return-to-play protocols and the location of hub cities. This was done while defining the details of a 24-man tournament at the end of the season and agreeing a new calendar for critical dates with the Stanley Cup, which is due to be awarded in early October.
In retrospect, everything seems to be so neat.
But that disproves the fact that it was an unpredictable mess when the season ended in March, like a big ball of wool strewn across the floor.
The CBA now needs to be ratified as part of a comprehensive return-to-play package because the whole thing is inextricably linked. The NHL Board of Governors will vote in the coming days and needs three-quarters of support. Once the NHL Players’ Association has received approval from its board of directors and has completed a phase of notifying players of the deal, a full membership vote will be conducted, a majority of which is required for ratification.
If all goes smoothly, they may be able to officially announce the planned resumption of the season by Friday.
Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman talk to a lot of people all over the hockey world and tell the audience everything about what they heard and what they think about it.
There will likely be some opposition votes that will be cast at the end of the players – “It won’t be a landslide,” predicted a source that was part of the NHLPA calls during the negotiations – but it’s important to note that the Agreement All players are allowed to restart the summer without penalty if they do so within 72 hours of the ratification process being completed.
The NHL intends to hold its summer tournament in Edmonton and Toronto with games starting August 1st. If this were successful, the Stanley Cup playoffs would be held entirely in Canada for the first time since 1925, according to Sportsnet Stats.
In order to get to a stage where a restart was possible, the NHL’s economic system had to be rethought. Although the current CBA was scheduled to run until September 2022, a negotiation extension was needed that would allow the league to lose more than $ 1 billion for the 2019-20 season, and even more than in a 2020-21 campaign that is likely is played in buildings with less than full capacity due to COVID-related restrictions.
Under the new contract, players will postpone 10 percent of next season’s salary and see an additional 20 percent contribute to a limited escrow account. The upper limit of the salary ceiling remains unchanged at $ 81.5 million and will remain there until the income from hockey (HRR) is back at $ 4.8 billion. From this point onwards, the upper limit is calculated using a new formula that relates to the actual HRR from two seasons ago plus the projected HRR from the previous season.
The bonus pool for the pandemic playoffs doubles to $ 32 million. As colleague Elliotte Friedman reported for the first time, Olympic participation for Beijing 2022 and Milan 2026 will resume until a later agreement with the IOC is reached.
Players will also see increasingly lower trust ceilings throughout the deal, while the contract will be extended by one year if the debt owed to the owners exceeds $ 125 million upon closing. More CBA details can be found here.
Lead author Ryan Dixon and NHL editor Rory Boylen always give 110%, but never rely on clichés when podcasting. Instead, they use a mix of facts, fun, and a diverse group of hockey voices to report on Canada’s most popular game.
The NHL and NHLPA lawyers had some late nights last week when they worried about the final details of the preliminary deal, but it didn’t look like how the current finish line agreement came about.
This happened on January 6, 2013 at 4:45 a.m. at the end of a 16-hour marathon round of negotiations at the Sofitel Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Bettman and Fehr looked exhausted when they shared the news with reporters who stayed in the lobby all night, and ended a 113-day lockout. Fehr said: “Hopefully within a few days the fans will be able to watch people who are skating – not both of us. “
They were barely visible this time.
Difficult days required a different approach.
And it has greatly increased the chances that we will soon emerge from an interrupted season and have a chance of players fighting for the Stanley Cup.
