NHL, players' union to meet again Monday
NHL and NHL Players' Association representatives met face-to-face Sunday morning in New York to negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, NHL.com reported.
The two sides were engaged in conference calls Saturday evening and met in-person about 9:30 a.m. ET Sunday.
The two sides were not expected to meet again Sunday evening, but they do plan to meet again on Monday, ESPN Katie Strang reported. The NHLPA is working on a counter offer, according to several reports.
The league had tabled a new proposal for a 10-year agreement on Thursday. It was the first proposal discussed by the two sides since Dec. 6. They are trying to work out a deal that would salvage an abbreviated 48-game schedule that would start Jan. 19.
All games through Jan. 14 have been cancelled due to the lockout.
Contract length, compliance buyouts, and annual-salary variance are union proposals that the NHL has reportedly been open to agreeing on. Those issues, if agreed on, include a mutual option to reopen after eight years.
The NHL wants contract lengths for players to be capped at six years after previously proposing a five-year maximum term. The league also wants to allow teams to sign their own free agents to a maximum of seven years as long as the player has been under contract with the team for at least one full season.
The league's proposal also includes:
---that teams are allowed a one-time buyout of a player's contract before the start of the 2013-14 season without counting against the team's salary cap. However, it would factor into the formula that determines the players' share of revenue.
---increasing the percentage that a player's annual salary in a multi-year contract can vary year-to-year to 10 percent, up from the 5 percent in prior proposals.
---preserving the terms of salary arbitration, free agency, hockey-related revenue accounting and definitions, as well as the entry-level system from the previous CBA.
