from Luke Fox of Sportsnet,

Donald Fehr stands on the driving range at Glen Abbey Golf Club and swings away at a series of questions facing the National Hockey League Players’ Association this off-season.

The players whose union he oversees aren’t participating in the Winter Olympics. Some are still waiting to cash cheques for last fall’s World Cup of Hockey, a tournament with a future as uncertain as the next collective bargaining agreement.

The salary cap has been growing at a snail’s pace. The gap between the NBA and NHL’s revenue has widened in favour of basketball. And last month, a few select player agents went public saying a group of unnamed NHLers are dissatisfied with the PA’s leadership....

Here are the highlights:...

On how to close revenue gap on the NBA:

"I’ll have you ask Gary [Bettman] about that, but from our standpoint, I think the international markets are key. Look, there’s only three ways to raise revenue. You can charge your existing customers more money—it’s going to be pretty hard to sell more tickets at the ACC at the moment, for example. You can go get new ones. Or you can do both.

"We are, I certainly believe, pretty well situated to take advantage of international markets. There has to be a lot of investment in the NHL [that] ownership is willing to put in, and we’ll see if they do that. We’ll see if [exhibition games in China] is a big step, a baby step, or the only step."

On the slow rise of the salary cap:

"How happy are we that there’s a salary cap at all? The answer is not. Everybody understands this, but the purpose of a salary cap is to place an artificial upward limit on what players get paid, which is below what the owners would otherwise pay....

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