from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

The thing is, Gary Bettman is not all wrong.

The commissioner was not wrong in hypothesizing during Wednesday’s Sports Business Journal’s 2020 Dealmakers in Sports virtual conference that changing the terms of the CBA so that the players give more money back to the owners this coming season rather than allowing escrow debt to explode would benefit the league and a substantial majority of players three, four and five years down the line.

But that is exactly what the union did not want when the players ratified the six-year CBA in early July. The union was fixated on limiting escrow and making players as whole as possible for 2020-21 while dealing with the devastating economic impact of the pandemic, even if that meant a flat cap for the foreseeable future that would hamstring teams and impede free-agent signings.

I hated the deal for that reason and wrote as much. I’d be fine with it if the players volunteer to change the CBA so that the cap could increase by a meaningful degree through the life of the agreement. I believe the more money in the system the better, even at the cost of annual mid-teens escrow.

But I am not a member of the NHLPA. Last I checked, neither was Bettman, who during his remarks so often said the NHL was not seeking to renegotiate that he might as well have repeatedly been proclaiming, “No quid pro quo.” This was the commissioner assuming the guise of the cop of any NYPD show telling the suspect that the police will do more to look after his/her best interests than his/her attorney.

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