TORONTO – The Players’ Association will present the NHL with a proposal here today that will directly address specific concerns and problem areas cited by the league in its three-day meeting with the union in Montreal last week, sources have told The Post.
The offer is expected to be an amended version of the luxury-tax and revenue-share based proposal the league summarily rejected after receiving it first in June of 2003 and then again last October.
At that time the union proposal included an across-the-board five-percent giveback on salaries – approximately $70 million – but, with one source suggesting that, “it doesn’t make sense for the union to negotiate against itself,” it is not known whether that giveback will be part of today’s offer.
For public relations purposes – as opposed to the league, never one of the PA’s priorities – it would certainly serve the players not to eliminate that facet of the proposal.
As reported by The Post on Sunday, today’s meeting will include members of the NHLPA executive board that is led by president Trevor Linden of the Canucks.
The committee, which met here yesterday with union negotiators, is comprised of seven players. Two of the vice presidents, Bill Guerin and Daniel Alfredsson, will not attend because of World Cup conflicts.
The league has accepted the union’s invitation to bring its executive committee of owners that is chaired by Calgary’s Harley Hotchkiss, to today’s session.
Last year, owners on the executive committee were unaware of the union’s June proposal until they themselves were presented with the offer by the PA in the October 2003 sit-down. The full Board of Governors was not presented with the proposal until months later, with commissioner Gary Bettman having stated that he is under no obligation to present the Board with an offer that does not directly respond to the league’s demand for cost-certainty, aka, “percentage of the gross.”
Today’s proposal does not guarantee cost-certainty- the league’s publicly stated pre-requisite for an agreement to avoid a lockout when the current CBA expires at 12:00:01 a.m. a week from today – but, The Post has been told, it has been tailored to remedy unique problem areas the league identified last week.
