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It'd be nice if Fehr and Bettman would get together and discuss these issues as much as we have in this thread.

I propose a 50/50 split... 50% of the year the league plays hockey, and the other 50% of the year the league doesn't not play hockey. Simple. Revenue will be split 50/50 as well, half going to players and owners and the other half going to a fan fund. The fan fund will only be redeemable in beer. Dare you to match that Bettman/Fehr Always knew my BA in business would pay off

Steve Yzerman

I'll jump on the 50/50 bandwagon, but here's the catch: 1. 50/50 effective immediately. 2. Cap is set accordingly with a rollback to get teams compliant with the cap and what 50% actually is. 3. "Make whole" is given a new meaning where contracts that are signed are honoured and essentially becomes a buyout of the amount that gets shaved off the players contract with the "rollback". Example: If the cap goes down 12% and you have Datsyuk making $6.7 mil for the next 2 seasons for a total of 13.4 mil, his buyout of 12% to get to the 50/50 while honouring signed contracts is $1.608 mil, thus Datsyuk is "made whole" The players are made whole on the contracts they signed for an exact dollar amount and "made whole". The "8 poor owners" get their 50/50 on the cap, but they learn a valuable lesson with throwing money around that they keep whining that they don't have.

"(I'm) not sure there is any reason to meet if there is nothing new to say," deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Canadian Press in an email. "Our position was communicated to the union pretty clearly last Tuesday and then again on Thursday. "If they have a desire to meet with regard to the proposal we have on the table, they know how to reach us." This really sounds like someone who gives a rats ass if there is even a season. The Chancellor has taught you well Darth Daly.... Keep standing firm with your 7 owners and default coyotes vote and feed the players and fans BS. About 75% to 25% of the fans seemingly are standing with the players, the one's who gave back 24% of their pay last time just for the owners and GM's to let things get out of control again cause their deal broke and the GM's found ways to overspend and exploit the very thing that Buttman and "most" of the owners wanted.

Bettman and the owners locked out the players (and fans) to renege on contracts they signed and offered in the first place, it's really as simple as that.

At least we can look forward to seeing Mrazek play. Hopefully a lot of starting time will do him good. Just wish we had someone better than McCollum and Pearce to push him. http://www.thegoalieguild.com/2012/10/12/ahl-goalie-power-rankings-week-1/

How would you suggest they go about getting to 50/50 right out of the gate AND honoring of all current contracts at the same time? (which you say you are in favor of)

I think that would basically create another AHL.

No kidding. I believe that we have a grasp on what each side needs more than Fehr and Bettman do. haroldsnepsts, you can be the NHLPA negotiator I will be the NHL negotiator Here is my first proposal. 50/50 split We will pay all current contracts 3 year entry level contract limit 6 year contract limit I want the new realignment plan as well Any thoughts?

There won't be a stream in the "usual place" as drum has no access to FSD now. He needs help from someone with a D*r*ctTV account.... *looks at someone in this thread* Hopefully we can get something sorted by Friday!

Actually, the two year ELC in the NHL's proposal is by design, not too lower value of 2nd contracts, but to delay UFA. While it initially looks like a give back to the players (i.e. the players want to get out of ELC as quickly as possible as the ELCs cap their earnings), it really is a take from the players when you combine with other proposals from the owners. The owners want to push UFA back to 8 years from the current 7. They also want to cap contracts at 5 years. Therefore, if an ELC goes 2 years, then the max a player can get after that is 5 years....you are at 7 years, but still not a UFA. Forces players to go through 3 contracts at least before getting to UFA. Players are used to be getting big paydays much sooner than that.

ELC's are naturally always different in regards to who it benefits depending on the player. A longer ELC will benefit particular players in regards to their team, while a shorter ELC will benefit other teams in regards to the player. Yeah, if they had locked up Kane on a long-term deal for less money earlier it would have been better for the Jets. However, it's different for every different players situation. Honestly they should all just agree to keep it at 3 years, seems to work good so far, no need change things just for the sake of changing them. Totally disagree on your interpretation of rhetorical speech though. Their is a difference between business and rhetorical PR speech to the public. The entire hockey reporting/hockey blogging community is up in arms over all the public rhetoric being thrown around that means absolutely nothing. Bettman and Fehr both come out of meetings and spew BS that makes their side look good, trying to get the fans and such on their side. Any intelligent person can read through the rhetoric and tell the difference between what is a PR scheme and what is actual business/work getting done. Both sides are to blame, however I'd call the owners/league the instigators. Ones mans rhetoric is a smart mans bulls***

Almost all your posts are arguing with those who support the PA, so naturally the majority of your points go against the players. Criticism of the owners is mostly limited to one little line in a whole post countering any pro-player opinions. Someone not following the entire debate could easily draw a wrong conclusion. Hell, I've been involved in a lot of it, and sometimes I forget.

Dude, you sound like the one who hasn't been following the lockout. Each side has done nothing but throw around rhetoric. Small gains have been made but they seem more hell-bent on winning the PR battle. Don't understand what you don't understand about that, it's rather obvious.

My proposal would be a 10 year deal with revenues starting at 55 % players / 45 % owners with a salary cap of 65 million and salary floor of 50 million. Team option to go 10 million above the cap with a 2 dollar for the league for every one dollar spent over the cap luxury tax. Every year, revenues drop for the players 1% and increase for the owners 1% until revenues are split 45 % players / 55% owners in the last year of the CBA.

1000 post. Still locked out.

Lidstrom said in his press conference that it would either be; kronwall, zetterberg, or filppula. There could be truth to it, but all signs point to Zetterberg. He's normally in the camera, has poise and a calming sensation. is there any credibility to this guy? he seems like an absolute duster. http://octopusthrower.com/2012/10/13/yes-wings-should-consider-trading-datsyuk-but-try-franzen-first/?utm_source=fansided_uppprev

Yeah, I voted for Datsyuk, but I absolutely hate the question in the poll. I don't know what a "pure" goal scorer means. I think that people hear that and think of a super-talented player who is singularly focused on putting points on the board. Marian Gaborik is a "pure goal scorer". So is Ovechkin. Pavel Bure and Ziggy Palffy from back in the day. The Red Wings don't really employ guys like that, or at least they haven't recently. If you took Datsyuk's innate ability and gave him the "personality" of Ovechkin, I feel like he scores 45 goals a year, but I can't "know" that. And he'd probably be a less valuable player to his team, whether people want to believe that or not. Again, though, I was really surprised by how much of a two-way game Hossa actually had when he played for us. Yeah, he was a terrific goal scorer that carried the Wings at times during the 08-09 regular season, but he's also a very large, strong individual who would back check and put a body on you in the corner. Nothing irks me more about (some) Wings fans that the revisionist history applied to Hossa's one year with this team. But that's a topic for a different thread.

I'm not sure I even like the tone of that guy's article, let alone the aimless speculation. His whole point was that naming Kronwall would send a "message" to the organization of fans - basically by picking a "tough guy" as a captain, we'd be adopting a "tougher" mentality. Is he saying the Wings stagnated because we had a captain like Lidstrom (who, by the way, won us a Cup and barely missed time despite almost losing a certain body part in '09...yeah, real pansy). I have always heard/thought/expected it would be Z. Datsyuk's the better player, but that's not what a captain is. That'd be like saying Fedorov should have been captain because he skates faster than Steve Yzerman.

Great post, though I'm not entirely clear why a league that generated this much revenue in the past 7 years couldn't have some workable form of revenue sharing. The NFL does, and it's not like Dallas and Jacksonville are even in the same arena in terms of the money they bring into the league. But your other points are all well taken. I've had people telling me that the players should cave in some more because "the teams in bad markets are still struggling". Well, great, but the lockout does nothing to solve that problem. There's no new revolutionary money-sharing arrangement that come out of it - the owners as a whole are just trying to grab as much as they can. I've never seen much evidence that Bettman and the well-to-do owners want real parity in this league. I find it ironic that the Stanley Cup matchup in 2004 was Calgary and Tampa Bay, but the Cup winners from the past several years in the "new NHL" have been LA, Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. All of them either large markets, or at least solid hockey markets with ownership that can easily spend up to the cap and beyond. (Well, the LA Kings are a more complex story, but they've definitely had money to spend in the past few years, and the ability to acquire expensive contracts from other teams). Can anyone honestly say that the players have done more to unreasonably drive up costs in this league than the OWNERS since 2005? I think everyone knows and expects that Crosby and Ovechkin are going to want gigantic 10-year deals, or that marginal players like Ville Leino and Scott Gomez are going to ask for $30 and $50 million deals that they never deserved. Somebody has to agree to PAY these stupid deals, or it doesn't happen. Heck, baseball doesn't even have a salary cap, and yet you see free agents like Jermaine Dye sit on the free agent market because they think they're worth multi-million dollar deals, and 30 MLB teams wisely disagree. Then you look at what teams like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Minnesota have done to take advantage of their healthy financial situation, and pay out MASSIVE long-term deals that are completely antithetical to the spirit of the CBA. And if Minnesota hadn't done it, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York, or any number of other "have" teams would have. And then Buffalo or the Islanders goes out and overpays some run-of-the-mill veteran way too much money, either because they need to keep up or, even worse, because they have to overpay some guys to even get to the salary cap floor. Yeah, I want an 82-game season, but if we leave all this crap unfixed and have continued labor unrest through the next CBA, how is this game going to fix any of the serious problems facing it in the coming years? EVERY other issue gets swallowed up by the money debate, even ones that everyone would benefit from, like realignment and player safety.

Fil - Dats - Mule ----------------Fil and Dats have shown chemistry together, Franzen provides the bigger body that works in the dirty areas Bert - Z - Brunner---------------Z and Brunner will have chemistry after playing for Zug together, Bert provides the big body Goose - Helm - Sammy--------Goose brings skill, Helm brings speed and defense, Sammy brings 3rd line scoring Toots - Abby - Cleary----------Grind line baby

I agree. I love Babcock, but I think he shuffles a bit much too. The first thing every hockey player says when they come back from injury is, "it's going to take a while to get my timing back". So obviously timing is really important. As such, going from Bertuzzi on a wing to Filppula probably f***s with that a little bit. All in all I think Babs is a great coach, but I think most of the time it's better to let players work through slumps rather than mix it up all the time.

Joe Thornton only has 9 points in 10 games there, in Thornton's most productive season on the NHL, he scored 114 points in 82 games with the Sharks in 2006-07

The owners will opt for a lockout the next time they get the chance, regardless of who's Commissioner. Just saying.