Our Long North American Nightmare May Be IS Over

As Larry Brooks suspected a few weeks back, it looks like the NHL is going to take advantage of baseball's All-Star break to announce an end to the lockout:

An extended session between the NHL and NHL Players' Association, which started at Noon et on Tuesday, is apparently continuing and should soon produce the agreement that would be the catalyst to ending the 301-day labour dispute, the longest in the history of North American professional sports.

In addition, the NHLPA is having a noon et conference call with its player representatives.

I'll be awaiting my regular e-mail communication from Jonathan Weatherdon of the NHLPA sometime today. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Marc Hoff and Jay Kumar for the heads up.

UPDATE: Mr. Weatherdon was right on cue at 12:30 p.m. U.S. EDT:

NHLPA AND NHL REACH AGREEMENT IN PRINCIPLE ON NEW COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT

TORONTO/NEW YORK (July 13, 2005): The National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association have reached an agreement in principle on the terms of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Details of the new Agreement will not be made available publicly pending the formal ratification process by NHLPA Members and the NHL Board of Governors.

It is anticipated that the ratification process will be completed next week, at which time the parties will be prepared to discuss the details of the Agreement and plans for next season. No further comment will be made until then.

Expect further updates, as we embark on the strangest offseason in NHL history.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's the schedule for awarding Sidney Crosby to the New York Rangers:

A prominent player agent told ESPN The Magazine's E.J. Hradek that the draft lottery will be held on July 21, with the entry draft being held in Ottawa on July 30.

Some advice to Commissioner Bettman: Apparently keeping the ping pong balls for the Rangers in a freezer the night before the draft will be all you need to get this right.

BETWEEN PERIODS UPDATE: Checking out all the NHL blogs. Here's Mike Chen:

Many are calling for the head of Gary Bettman. Many are calling for the head of Bob Goodenow. They are both at fault here - Bettman, for not tempering the irresistable temptation of grabbing expansion money fast and furious, for not instituting a competition committee sooner, for blindly saying "The game is great!" for so many years. Goodenow, on the other hand, made one big stupid mistake. He refused to budge on the salary cap.

I want to assure everyone that I'm typing as fast as I can. Here's the mighty James Mirtle from last night in Toronto:

The Toronto Sun has jumped the gun with their coverage, dedicating today's front to the fact that Bettman wants to add an additional four teams to the playoffs each year (and a whole new playoff round). Tom Benjamin has been fond lately of saying that Bettman has no new revenue streams to tap, although by inventing additional games to be played, the commish just may have outsmarted him in this regard (unfortunately).

One side effect of the extra playoff round: Finishing up top means that much more (you get to play a squad that just played a few extra games while your team healed up), and sneaking into the playoffs at the bottom will get you punished. Sounds like a formula to both raise revenue, and make it more likely that the top teams will last into what will now be the third round of the playoffs.

More to come.

UPDATES KEEP COMING: Here's the Rodent from last night on how life may change for your the league's GMs:

The big market G/M will now resort to an alternative he didn't consider before. Look at the way it worked under the previous CBA. There were two recruiting mentalities:

• Traditional Small Mmarket
• Traditional Big Market

(snip)

Now under what we believe will be the new CBA there will still be two mentalities. But the distinction is different than before. Now you'll have:

• Traditional Small Mmarket
• Neo-Small Market

This time both factions are salary-constrained. It's just a case of shades-of-grey. What I'm calling the "Neo-Small Market" are clubs who must now operate like small-market clubs, albeit with a bit more pocket change to spend on overcoming recruitment mistakes.

Discuss: Who will be the Bill Belichick of the NHL? Meanwhile, there are lots of good links over at PJ's place.

BEAT THE OWNERS TO THE PUNCH UPDATE: The league's e-mail announcement of the settlement wasn't sent out from NHL HQ until more than 90 minutes after the union announcement. Hmmm.

BELTWAY UPDATE: Here's a D.C. wrinkle from Tarik el-Bashir at the Washington Post:

For the Washington Capitals and their fans, the announcement couldn't have been more timely. It will likely give the club enough time to sign 2004 No. 1 overall draft pick Alexander Ovechkin in time to get him in a Capitals uniform this season.

According to published reports, Ovechkin has until July 20 to come to an agreement with the Caps without having to pay a penalty to Avangard Omsk, the Russian Super League team that signed him away from Dynamo.

Drudge is fronting a wire story on the end of the lockout.

FREE AGENT UPDATE: Thomas Luongo notes:

As one astute poster over at HFBoards.com mentioned a while ago, the increase in UFA’s means that average salaries will drop. The same number of dollars will be chasing a greater number of goods. While I love the insights many fans bring to the game itself, such smart economic analysis is truly a rarity over there. So, while individual players will reap the benefits of a lower UFA age, the owners, GM’s and ultimately, THE FANS will reap the even greater benefits of seasoned NHL talent at more reasonable prices.

I can't find the link right now, but it was a couple of months ago that I was watching Baseball, the Ken Burns documentary. In one segment, Marvin Miller, the godfather of MLB's labor movement, noted that the most important concession he got from owners was to structure the league so only a limited number of players would become free agents every season, thereby boosting their value. It's clear we're going to see the exact opposite effect in the NHL.

EVENING UPDATE: Tom Benjamin thinks the new CBA will be a disaster:

It's awful, and in particular it is awful for fans in small markets. It could hardly be worse and unfortunately the details can only make it worse - they can't improve it.

Free agency will be at age 27 or after seven years of service by 2008. This means that no matter where Sidney Crosby ends up he will be an unrestricted free agent at age 25. The league's best players - the ones who can usually step right in - will spend their prime playing years in a big media market. If a small market team does get Sidney, an intelligent general manager will be looking to deal him at age 24.

The cap that is supposed to level the playing field tilts it very hard towards the big media markets. The salary range is misleading because of the rollback and the fact that it is based on the assumption league revenues will be down next year.

Tom has been both the most eloquent and level-headed critic of ownership, so I don't take his opinion lightly. You shouldn't either. More later.

Eric 12:23 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ericmcerlain.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4905

Comments

Posted by: at July 13, 2005 01:02 PM

Posted by: at July 13, 2005 04:42 PM

Posted by: at July 13, 2005 04:44 PM

Post a comment