With the NHL’s target start date of Jan. 1 no longer realistic, the league has set its sights on a reported 56-game season and a start date of Jan. 15
Given the lack of progress to date and seemingly no real attempt to start the season in the beginning of January, this latest update is certainly good news, right?
Well, not for all.
According to Larry Brooks of the New York Post, the current situation between the NHL and the NHLPA has left Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs …livid… with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
While Brooks points out that Jacobs is not alone in his feelings towards Bettman about the current situation of the league, this report should not surprise any Bruins fan.
In July the NHL and its Players Association ratified a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), allowing the league to restart after COVID-19 put a pause on the 2019-20 season. With the ratification of the CBA over the summer, labor peace was expected to last through 2026, something every hockey fan wants to hear.
But here we are, not even five months into the agreed upon CBA and that expected labor peace has been thrown out the window.
According to reports the owners asked the NHLPA to defer more salary and increase the escrow cap due to the expectations that much of the season will be played without fans in attendance.
With time of the essence and the clock ticking, it’s certainly frustrating that while dates, and details of the NHL’s return have been discussed, nothing has been set in stone yet.
The NBA—who by the way completed their season after the NHL—has already ironed out details to their 2020-21 season with training camps underway and games to begin later this month.
But back to Jacobs.
Brooks goes on to discuss how Jacobs, and several other owners feel they were uninformed during the negotiations over the summer and were not given enough time to review the new CBA.
"We’ve been told by two sources that club owners were largely uninformed about the spring and summer negotiations and had little or no time to examine the CBA before it was put to a vote. Now that the owners understand the ramifications of the deal given the challenges of playing at least a largely spectator-free 2020-21, there is a group livid at the commissioner and deputy Bill Daly. We are told that Boston’s 'Mr. Jacobs' is among them,… Brooks wrote.
While this frustration would surely be valid if it was indeed true, it’s hard to believe that in such an important negotiation involving something very impactful to the league’s owners and their wallets that they were uninformed and not given the proper information or time. Especially Jacobs who is the chairman on the NHL’s Board of Governors.
Brooks goes on to report that there a “handful of owners… who want to cancel the 2020-21 season if the players fail to agree to make concessions.
Worth $2.6 billion according to Forbes, Jacobs too has felt the pain of the pandemic, laying off over 500 Delaware North employees in September. While it's easy to feel bad for those employers who lost their jobs, it's hard to feel bad for Jacobs and his billion dollar bank account.
Oh, and let’s not forget that it was Mr. Jacobs who was driving the 'let’s cancel the season' bus during league lockouts in the 1994-95, 2004-05 and 2012-13 seasons.
While Bettman has said multiple time over the past few weeks that there will be no renegotiation and a January puck drop remains the goal, where things go from here are anybody’s guess.
But the league and the players talked over the weekend and presumably will continue to do so this week. If a Jan. 15 start date really is the plan, then this week should shape up to be an important one for the NHL.
NHL/NHLPA spoke both Saturday/Sunday. Still lots to do and a lot of moving pieces, sources say. Once both sides come together on a package for this season, the NHL has to bring it to the BOG for consideration and the NHLPA to its Executive Board. So, some ground to cover still.
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 7, 2020
If things go the way we hope it does, Mr. Jacobs’ anger will only grow and a hockey season will follow in mid-January.