from Dan Oldfield at CBC,

It seems to me this players/owners meeting, the cancellation of games, the use (or misuse) of the mediation process, talk of decertification, and bargaining publicly through the media, etc., has all been in order to avoid making the compromises necessary to end the dispute.

Ultimately the parties will negotiate a new collective agreement.

It will not look like either of the “best we can do” offers currently sitting on the table. There will be movement by both parties.

Maybe it will happen in the next few weeks, or sometime next year, but there will be a deal. And the best people to get the deal done are the same people who have been working on it for the past many months.

I have a few practical proposals to end the NHL lockout:

1. Treat 2012-13 as an extension of the old contract, with the same split of revenue as last season but reduced to reflect the shortened schedule. In this way, at least one year of existing contracts will have been exhausted.

2. Make a new six-year deal with a 50-50 split of revenues to run from 2013-14 to 2018-19.

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