NHL lockout ends
NEW YORK (AP) – Open the arenas, break out the skates and fire up the Zamboni. The NHL is back.
After losing an entire season to a lockout, players and owners ended an all-night bargaining session Wednesday by reaching their goal: a tentative deal, expected to include a salary cap, that virtually ensures hockey will return this fall.
The six-year pact still needs to be ratified by both sides. The players’ association has scheduled a members meeting in Toronto next week, while the NHL board of governors plans to gather next Thursday in New York for a vote.
“It’s a new day,” Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock said.
The last round of negotiations began Tuesday at noon and culminated around noon Wednesday with a joint news release announcing the deal.
Though details won’t be released until both sides approve it, a salary cap would be something players’ union executive director Bob Goodenow never wanted.
Once everyone signs off on the deal, the league can begin the difficult task of gaining public support. No matter who won or lost, the fight cost the NHL a full season.
“To be totally honest, I really don’t care what the deal is anymore. All I care about is getting the game back on the ice,” Flyers star Jeremy Roenick said in a telephone interview during a celebrity golf event in Nevada.
“I think the deal is not great for the players. It is definitely an owner-friendly deal. For the last 10 years, the players have made a lot of money and now we are in a position where everybody is going to make money,” he said. “Unfortunately, it had to take a whole year to get to a point where we could have been last year.”
This lockout was worse than any in sports, dwarfing the one that cut the 1994-95 hockey season nearly in half and resulted in the agreement that expired last September.
In February, commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the season, making the NHL the first North American sports league to lose a year because of a labor dispute.
“I don’t want to get to the relief point yet until everything’s finalized,” said Carolina Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford, a former goalie. “What we went through was necessary. We had to get some controls on our business and certainly I’m hoping that’s what this new agreement does.”
While the NHL seems to have gotten what it wanted, there is no way to measure the damage done to a sport that already was the least popular of the four major leagues in the United States.
“That’s going to be our next big step – winning back the fans,” said Nashville Predators forward Jim McKenzie, a 15-year NHL veteran. “We’ll have our work cut out for us.”
If all goes according to plan, a scaled-down draft is expected to be held later this month and training camps will open in September from Vancouver to Miami. NHL games will be back on the schedule in October.
“It’ll be a great thing to get the game back up,” Columbus Blue Jackets coach Gerard Gallant said.
Selling the sport might take a while longer.
During the lockout, disgruntled Buffalo fan Doug Sitler sold more than 15,000 magnetic car ribbons that read: “I need my hockey fix(ed).”
“I think it’s going to take a little bit of time for people to get back in the swing of things,” he said. “But sports fans are pretty fickle. They have short memories. They really do.”
It took all night and then some for the final round of negotiations to produce an agreement.
The sides met for 10 straight days in New York, and it became clear Wednesday morning – the 301st day of the lockout – that they weren’t going to leave the room without an agreement.
The expected salary cap likely will have a ceiling of $39 million and a minimum around $22 million.
Player salaries will not exceed 54 percent of league-wide revenues, expected to be around $1.8 billion. Players will also put money into escrow, and after each season that will be used to balance out the set percentage based on actual revenues.
Bettman warned in February that offers the union passed up were better than any it would see once a year of hockey was lost.
Just days before the season was wiped out, the players’ association said for the first time it would accept a salary cap if the league dropped its desire to link player costs to revenues.
That started a wild week that included the cancellation of the season Feb. 16 and a false hope three days later that it would be saved.