The Toronto Sun's Terry Koshan conveniently snagged a copy of NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr's email to his 700-plus constituents, summarizing Thursday's collective bargaining events as seen through the PA's eyes. Prepare for technical terms!

1. Transition payment ("make whole"): We moved off of our $393 Million proposal and accepted the League's December 5 offer of $300 Million. This means there is an agreement on dollars.

2. Individual SPC (standard player contract) length and Variability of SPCs: The Owners have proposed (i) a limit of 5 years, except that Players who re-sign with their Clubs could contract for 7 years, and (ii) a 5% limit on year-to-year salary variability in long-term deals. We believe that these restrictions would devastate the "middle class" of players and result in the NBA model, where a few players earn huge salaries while pushing everyone else down toward the minimum. (Their proposal would also undermine the free-agent market by giving a significant advantage to Clubs that want to re-sign their own Players.) Moreover, in spite of our concerns, in order to close the deal we moved from of our last offer (a 10-year limit and no limit on variability) and instead proposed an 8-year limit on all SPCs and a variability limit of 25% over the term of the SPC, applied to contracts of 7 years or longer.