from Pierre LeBrun of ESPN,
Seven or eight unresolved issues remain, sources say, the three most meaningful ones being the second-year cap, the length of player contacts and the players’ pension.
Are we really going to see a season canceled over those remaining issues? Or if a season is canceled, is it more because of the dysfunctional dynamic that exists between both sides in negotiation?
Did I mention this was the most embarrassing and irrational sports labor negotiation in history?
Logic dictates a deal will get done, given what little separates both sides. But logic has been benched for long periods of this sordid game.
from Helene Elliott of the LA Times,
The next few days' negotiations between the league and the players' association will determine whether there will be an abbreviated season or if the only victories at stake will be won in courtrooms. An ominous tone crept in Thursday, when two small-group sessions produced no real progress and the NHLPA asked its members to take the complex legal step of approving a potential dissolution of the union. But there's still reason enough to believe there will be a season, that they will realize they must compromise or they will cause lasting damage to a game that manages to survive despite the people who run it.
Neither side can legitimately claim at this stage that the potential gains of holding out for a better deal outweigh all that has already been lost — or all that could yet be lost if Commissioner Gary Bettman follows the script from 2004-05 and again cancels a full season.
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