Donald Fehr expressed some hope that collective bargaining talks this week will help lead to some resolution.

But he also made it clear in an hour-long meeting with the Toronto Star’s editorial board that the longer the NHL lockoutlasts, the less happy the players will be playing under a salary cap.

“If this goes on for an extended period of time, I don’t know what they (the players) are going to do. But I think it’s safe to say, they would be exploring all options,” said Fehr.

He added the players can live with a salary cap if an agreement can be reached quickly.

“Where the players are, they want to make a deal,” Fehr said. “Even though the owners’ proposal went as far away from the players as they could, the players did not respond in kind. They made a proposal which moved in the owners’ direction. If there can be an agreement in a relatively short term which puts the pieces back together and gets the season going, I think the players can live with that.”

Fehr fell short of calling for the salary cap to be scrapped outright — something that would put the NHL and the players further apart. But it was a reminder to commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners — on the eve of new talks with the league on non-core economic issues — that things can get ugly in a hurry.

“I hope we can continue to make some progress on what we call the non-core economic issues and I hope we can have discussions that can spark a new round of significant talks on the core economic issues,” said Fehr. “Whether that will happen, I can’t predict. But I hope it does.”

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the league has heard the association’s threats related to the salary cap before.

“Ultimately, it’s their call,” Daly said in an email to the Star. “Hopefully, we all want a quicker resolution to this negotiation than a longer one. How the PA ultimately decides to deal with that issue will be very telling.”

The NHL has publicly said it wants the players to return to the bargaining table with a new proposal, but Fehr is not happy that league wants the proposal on its terms: that the union must accept some kind of rollbacks in Year 1 of the deal.

Fehr says he has “ideas” regarding a new proposal, but none include rolling back salaries.

“Maybe we should make a simple proposal that the starting point ought to be, maybe the players and owners each live up to the letter of the individual contracts,” said Fehr. “I don’t think that would meet with a very good response in Gary’s office. But it’s not a bad thought.”

Daly said the league is encouraging Fehr and the players to come with a new proposal.

“The union has had one economic proposal during the nearly four months we have been negotiating. One. And it was tabled nearly two months ago,” said Daly.

The association did bring a second proposal to the table in September, but it was rejected by the league as being too similar to the first. Both forecast the growth of player salaries to levels beyond the league’s projected revenue growth.

“We have repeatedly encouraged the union to bring a new proposal to the table, including as recently as last Friday,” said Daly. “We have suggested that a proposal — any proposal — would at least have the potential of moving the negotiation from the static state in which we sit currently.”

At issue is how best to divide hockey-related revenue. Last year, the players received 57 per cent — or $1.87 billion of the league’s $3.3 billion in revenue.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The NHL’s latest proposal calls for the players’ share to drop to 47 per cent over six years. The players call for raises of 2, 4 and 6 per cent from the $1.87 billion over the next three years, then a readjustment related to revenues in Years 4 and 5 that would place the players between 50 and 57 per cent of HRR. The NHLPA is also calling for increased revenue sharing to help the league’s weakest teams.

The first two weeks of the season have already been cancelled and time is winding down to the when the league may announce another round of cancellations. Fehr said he hoped the season would start soon.

“In basketball (the NBA locked out its players last season), they played 75, 80 per cent of the season starting as late as Christmas. I do hope we start many weeks before Christmas,” said Fehr, declining to predict when he thought the NHL season might begin.

“After some of my experiences in baseball, I’m out of the prediction business. I don’t think I’m any better at it than anybody else. All I can say is, you try every day. You hope and you hope it starts just as soon it possibly can.”

Fehr spent a great deal of his time explaining why salary caps in the NFL, NBA and NHL are little more than poorly managed microeconomies while the revenue-sharing world of Major League Baseball — one he helped create — has led to labour peace, league profitability and rising franchise values.

“Baseball has become stable, hockey has lost more games than the other sports combined,” said Fehr. “Baseball is growing rapidly and its franchise values are growing enormously rapidly. I don’t think the two are unrelated.

“I tend to believe that planned economies don’t work very well. That’s what we have in hockey and the capped sports. That said, the players are willing to live with it, if we can get a deal done.”

READ MORE:

Fans suffering from NHL lockout

Read more about: