via Mike Harrington of Sabres Edge,

Retired New York Times baseball writer Murray Chass is considered one of the godfathers of reporting on sports labor relations, and was honored by the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 2003 (right) as the winner of the J.G. Spink Award from the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Chass worked closely for many years covering Marvin Miller, the late czar of the MLB Players' Association and the mentor of current NHLPA czar Donald Fehr, and intimately knows how Fehr operates.

So you should take Chass' column on Fehr posted on his personal Web site today as pretty solid analysis. The headline is "Bet on Fehr, Not Bettman."

Wrote Chass: "Major League Baseball’s annual revenue has soared beyond $7 billion, and baseball is so awash in money that the two sides don’t need to fight over caps and taxes. The N.H.L., meanwhile, remains in the dark ages of labor relations. Bettman has made sure they stay there with no apparent emergence or advance in sight." Chass' column is a pretty insightful read.