The NHL and the players’ association are ready to get back to the bargaining table.
There were no formal negotiations on Sunday, but all signs pointed to talks yesterday in an effort to end the lockout and save the season.
“There will be no further face-to-face meetings today,” the union said in a statement on Sunday. “The plan is for the sides to meet tomorrow.”
Those would be the first negotiations since the sides met with a federal mediator on Dec. 13.
The league and the union had informational discussions — by conference call and in meetings — with staff members that lasted much of Saturday and concluded on Sunday. Those talks were spurred by the nearly 300-page contract proposal the NHL presented to the union on Thursday.
All games through Jan. 14 have been canceled, claiming more than 50 percent of the original schedule. The NHL wants to reach a deal by Jan. 11 and open the season on Jan. 19, with a 48-game schedule.
Bargaining sessions with only the NHL and union have not been held since Dec. 6, when talks abruptly ended after the players’ association made a counter--proposal to the league’s previous offer. The league said that offer was contingent on the union accepting three elements unconditionally and without further bargaining.
The NHL then pulled all existing offers off the table. Two days of sessions with mediators the following week ended without progress.
A person familiar with key points of the offer said that the league proposed raising the limit of individual free-agent contracts to six years from five — seven years if a team re-signs its own player; raising the salary variance from one year to another to 10 percent, up from 5 percent; and one compliance buyout for the 2013-2014 season that would not count toward a team’s salary cap, but would be included in the overall players’ share of income.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the new offer were not being discussed publicly.
The NHL maintained the deferred payment amount of US$300 million it offered in its previous proposal, an increase from an earlier offer of US$211 million. The initial US$300 million offer was pulled after negotiations broke off this month.
The latest proposal is for 10 years, running through the 2021-2022 season, with both sides having the right to opt out after eight years.
If this offer does not quickly lead to a new collective bargaining agreement, the next round of cuts could claim the entire schedule.
The NHL is the only North American professional sports league to cancel a season because of a labor dispute, losing the 2004-2005 campaign to a lockout. A 48-game season was played in 1995 after a lockout stretched into January.
It is still possible this dispute could eventually be settled in the courts if the sides cannot reach a deal on their own.
The NHL filed a class-action suit last month in US District Court in New York in an effort to show its lockout is legal. In a separate move, the league filed an unfair labor practice charge with the US National Labor Relations Board, contending bad-faith bargaining by the union.
Those moves were made because the players’ association took steps toward potentially filing a “disclaimer of interest,” which would dissolve the union and make it a trade association. That would allow players to file anti-trust lawsuits against the NHL.
Union members voted overwhelmingly to give their board the power to file the disclaimer by tomorrow. If that deadline passes, another authorization vote could be held to approve a later filing.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier