"Make Whole" or Make Right?

  As the NHL lockout approached its’ 50th day, talks finally started back up between the NHL and NHLPA. The National Hockey League, it appears, is starting for the first time to initiate a resolution in which the Players’ Association will accept to pull the league out from under its’ gloomy 2012-13 season.

  The bargaining tables have been empty and quiet since the NHL’s last proposal to the NHLPA on October 19th, which saw the NHLPA’s three counter-offers quickly dismissed by the NHL, if all of ten minutes is to be deemed ‘quick’, the NHL more or less walked out on immediate talks with the Players Association’s leader, Donald Fehr.

  Though the public talks have been nonexistent, there have been plenty of talks between the parties, reportedly via telephone, and there is a lot of work going on behind closed doors on both sides as the urgency of finding a solution is critical at this point if a season is to be salvaged.

  The NHL made somewhat of a surprise move when they made public their willingness to budge on what is titled the “Make Whole” provision in the framework of the NHL’s most recent proposal.

   "Make Whole" is a protection plan to cover player salary reduction in dropping the players revenue share from 57 per cent to 50 per cent in year one of a new CBA. The NHL is now willing to shift the provisions of “Make Whole” from the players’ share over to the owners’ side.

  As TSN’s Darren Dreger reports, included is a deferred payment system which the league is also willing to reconsider when negotiations resume. According to many around the league, this is considered to be a considerable step forward.

  However, heading into the weekend, the NHL seems to be stumbling over itself and attempting to right previous wrongs - to put it lightly. NHL Deputy Chief Commissioner Bill Daly and Donald Fehr met in an undisclosed location on Saturday, day 49 of the lockout, and reportedly held talks until 1:00a.m.

"We had a series of meetings yesterday and exchanged views on the most important issues separating us," wrote Daly in an email to TSN on Sunday morning."We plan to meet again sometime early this week.''

"Hopefully we can continue the dialogue, expand the group, and make steady progress," said Donald Fehr.

  How far of a step forward is this? Well, as Dreger generally put it, the devil is in the details. The overall term used in the NHL’s latest move has been that the NHL has made concessions, but the hard truth is that given the frameworks of their latest proposal, it can hardly be defined as a concession.

  Puckdaddy’s Greg Wyshynski put it best in his most recent release regarding the weekend’s happenings. “Honoring the players' current contracts should be an obligation rather than a point of conciliation. Plus, we're not entirely sure making your own proposal more equitable to the other side a sign of compromise; isn't it a sign that the initial proposal was inadequate?”

  Elliotte Friedman of the CBC has doubts of the NHL’s ‘step forward.’

“But the NHLPA is going to have some hard questions, including: What exactly does "ownership" mean -- some of it or all of it? What is the formula going to be? And, most importantly, what do we have to accept in order for you to do this?” he said. “If the answer is "everything else we've proposed," we're going to have a problem.”

  Eventually, a deal must be done. Whether it’s this season or the next, both parties are going to have to budge considerably from where they stand on many key issues for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement to be made. Again, the agreement must be collective, and again, there must certainly be some bargaining. Fortunately, it seems as though both sides realize how quickly this must transpire.

  At this point, the NHL has canceled 327 games. 326 of those would see, as estimated by Bill Daly, a $720 million loss in revenue. Likewise, with the cancellation of the Winter Classic, over $3 million was lost to corporate sponsorships not including the lost revenue in ticket sales and merchandise. And, if you’ve looked into attending the Classic, you can only imagine how much has been lost on that front alone - and what about an authentic jersey? The losses keep piling up against the NHL and the players alike.

  It does seem at this point that the time is now, and that if there is any hope in salvaging a partial season, a decision must be made uncomfortably soon. Though s full 82-game season is out of the question and we’ve lost our beloved Winter Classic, it’s not yet too late to play hockey. There may be weeks, perhaps a month, before we yet again lose an entire season to the squabbling of a bunch of over-paid suits and ties and athletes that have jobs we could only dream of having – and the majority of us would take it at a sliver of the salary just to be doing it.

  The NHL, the players, and the owners have had years to figure this out, and we’re over a month into the season that has yet to see a puck drop on NHL ice. It’s very disappointing. They should all be embarrassed of themselves.

- Kendall Grubbs