NEW YORK -With just a little bit of hedging, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman all but issued a drop-dead date for saving what's left of the season: this weekend.
The lockout reached its 147th day Wednesday. If a deal is reached, Bettman said, there would be a 28-game regular season and the 16-team playoff structure would be preserved.
It is clear to me that if we're not working on a written document by this weekend
I don't see how we can play any semblance of a season Bettman said.
Hours earlier, the players' association rejected what was described as a compromise proposal during a secret meeting in Toronto, NHL chief legal officer Bill Daly said.
The union asked Bettman and Daly to stay in Toronto through Thursday so negotiating sessions could continue.
The union scheduled a conference call for Wednesday evening.
Obviously we will listen to everything the union has to say but we've given all we can give and gone as far as we can go
Bettman said.
This has just been a very difficult
frustrating process
and we're sorry. But we have to go through it
he said.
The lockout has wiped out 813 of the 1,230 regular-season games, as well as this weekend's scheduled All-Star game.
The NHL offered to go with the players' association proposal from Dec. 9 that featured a luxury-tax system and an immediate 24 percent rollback on all existing contracts.
But the league also put in place four different scenarios that would shift the agreement back to what the league proposed on Feb. 2 -a salary cap that would force teams to spend at least $32 million on player costs but no more than $42 million, including benefits.
Also included in that six-year offer -which could be reopened by the union after four years -was a profit-sharing plan that would allow the players' association to evenly split revenues over a negotiated level with the league.
The union's response was that this was not a framework that they were interested in going forward with
Bettman said.
17
Archives
