NHL, NHLPA in preliminary talks about CBA
NHL Players Association executive director Donald Fehr listens to a question during a news conference after a meeting of the NHLPA executive board in Chicago. (June 27, 2012) Credit: AP
After about four hours of talks Friday at the NHL's headquarters in Manhattan, Players Association executive director Donald Fehr said the league and the NHLPA are agreeing on topics of discussion and will likely meet next week and for the remainder of the month.
The NHL's collective-bargaining agreement expires Sept. 15. The two sides were meeting for the third time, and although NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly called the meetings "productive" in a statement, Fehr said there is plenty of work to do before a new CBA is reached.
"Topics, topics," Fehr said. "Nobody is saying, 'Here's the precise word that we want to substitute for some other word,' but we have been saying, 'Here are the areas that we'd like to discuss.'
"I'm not going to characterize it," Fehr said when pressed for more details. "And I'm not going to characterize it not because I'm trying to keep it confidential so much as if you were in the room and I characterized it, you would know what I meant. But if you weren't, it would be hard to say and I just really don't want people to guess."
The two sides hope to avoid the acrimony that marked the last CBA talks, which led to a lockout by the owners that killed the 2004-05 season.
"A number of important issues were raised on both sides of the table," Daly said, "all of which will be discussed more thoroughly as we get deeper into the bargaining. We are pleased with the level of engagement and look forward to meeting again next week."
Fehr said a number of subjects were covered and, for the second day in a row, he characterized the sentiment in the room as "businesslike." He stopped short of saying whether the meeting was positive.
"I'm completely out of the prediction business," said Fehr, who previously represented the MLBPA for 23 years, including the strike-shortened 1994 and lockout-shortened 1995 season. "You hope for the best, you do everything you can and you try and get a deal done. You know, for all my years in the other sport, I discovered my ability to predict is no better than anybody else's, so I just stopped."
