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Talks End. Gap Shrinks. Getting Somewhere. Oh No, I Meant Doom and Gloom. |
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Today the NHLPA came to the NHL with its best proposal to date. The players (good cops) pushed Donald Fehr (bad cop) to make a proposal Fehr called "against his wishes" to "meet the NHL way past halfway."
As the talks broke up both sides were full of the kinds of happy thoughts which accompany spending quality time with the people who are preventing you from making millions/billions of dollars.
The reporters on the scene, who have spent far too much time waiting around to continually be given bad news, get to ask the parties in question "how they felt" and they generally arent saying they feel fantastic.
I have said it too many times now, but we simply can't cover this like a regular season game. This is a negotiation, not a sporting event and we can't follow it in a linear way. There is no box score. This process is about agonizing long spells of nothing while you hope the other side bends...Asking a player what happened immediatley after a game is not the equivalent of asking someone involved in a negotiation immediately..
This is not a sporting event...it's a check list. Neither side will emerge claiming victory. Both sides will either survive together or crumble together...Certain things have to occur and the movement has to be towards the collective goal.
What happened today was a very positive step towards the return of our sport. You can argue it was negative if you want to, but such an argument would be emotionally based. Today's proposal wasn't positive and it wasn't negative..what it was, was necessary.
As frustrated as everyone will sound today, the chief negotiators, Fehr and Bettman, will turn to their constituents when all have gone home and let them know...secretly of course...that while we arent there yet, we are getting somewhere..
Unfortunately, like I also said this morning, I am not sure we have hit the time the NHL is waiting on to actually make this deal happen. The Players are more desperate right now than the league. It's a slap in the face to the fans to say that, but it is the truth...
Many I talk to feel we are three weeks from the bottom line day, sometime around December 16th, when the two sides will get what they can get and GET out..or agree to meditation to save the season...
Some of the people I trust the most have been saying for a long time now we have entered the Mediation Pre-Game show. They believe neither side has the stomach to miss the season and are just now positioning themselves for the inevitable mediator.
I asked a good NHL source last summer if he believed mediation is a method the league would take and knowing him well I would have expected him to say, "not a chance," but instead he responded with, "we aren't there yet."
I also asked him if mediation was preferable to losing a season and he said, "as long as we are close enough at that point it may be a great option..."
More to come...
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