NHL and Players Agree: The Other Guy's Offer Stinks

After today's meeting between the NHL and NHL Players' Association, we know that the league wants a salary cap and the players won't agree to it.

Of course, that's where they have disagreed since the current labor dispute began. So the meeting did not make much progress towards ending the NHL lockout. As TSN reports, the two sides rejected each other.

The league rejected a proposal made last week by the Players' Association. The players rejected the NHL's counter-proposal. At their respective press conferences, league commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA head Bob Goodenow used phrases like "completely phony" and "non-starter" and "fatally flawed" to describe each other's negotiating position.

No further talks are scheduled, and NHL hockey has never seemed as far away as it does today.

Highlights of today's proposal by the NHL:

1. Players to receive 54 percent of league revenues every season. Based on last season's numbers, that means a salary cap of between $34.6 million and $38.6 million per team in the first year of the new deal.
2. Salaries to be rolled back on a graduated scale. Players earning $5 million or more give back 35 percent of the value of existing contracts. Players earning between $4 million and $4.99 million give back 30 percent, and so on.
3. No signing bonuses or performance bonuses during a player's first four years under an NHL contract.
4. Salary arbitration is eliminated.

Details of the Latest Proposal From the NHL.
Details of the Latest Proposal From the NHL Players' Association.
NHL Lockout Basics: Simplifying the issues in the labor war.