The NHL and NHL Players' Association's No. 2 men will touch base on Tuesday night to see if there's a way to break the labor stalemate and get talks moving again.
A day after an NHL statement spelling out its viewpoint to fans, deputy commissioner Bill Daly went on Fan 590 in Toronto on Monday to elaborate on why the league has locked out players for the third time in 18 years.
Players have complained that they gave up a lot in the 2004-05 lockout by accepting a salary cap and a 24% rollback and they should not have to have their salaries rolled back again. The agreement reached after the canceled season guaranteed players 54% of league revenue and is currently at 57% because hockey revenues have surpassed $2.7 billion. The salary cap has risen from $39 million in 2005-06 to a projected $70.2 million in 2012-13 as revenues jumped from $2.1 billion to $3.3 billion.
"The bottom line is we missed on that (the 57%)," Daly said. "It turned out to be too much."
The NHL, in its latest proposal, suggested knocking down the players' share to 49% immediately and eventually to 47% over the course of a six-year deal.
"It's a lot more expensive to do business today," Daly said. "There's also a lot of other costs that are associated with running hockey franchises that don't get accounted for."
The union has offered to take a 2% raise (followed by raises of 4% and 6%), which it said would save $465 million based on the current growth rate of 7.1%. They would turn that savings over to the creation of a fund to help financially stressed teams. They would rather help the struggling Phoenix Coyotes than help the Toronto Maple Leafs get richer, for example.
"They'll benefit," Daly said of the Maple Leafs, "and they'll also contribute more in revenue sharing."
Asked by the hosts whether a 50-50 split in revenues and an increase to $200 million in revenue sharing would remedy the problem of struggling franchises, Daly wouldn't bite on those numbers.
"I think we can come up with a collective bargaining agreement, combined with a revenue sharing program, that gives clubs an ability to be stable and a competitive and financial successful," he said.
The league has also proposed a five-year limit on contracts, the elimination of salary arbitration and extending the amount of time before players leave their entry-level deals.
Those issues have been put aside while the sides decide how to divide the pie. But Daly made clear he didn't like the long-term contracts with $1 million years at the end to drive down the cap cost. That issue came to a head in 2010 when the league rejected Ilya Kovalchuk's 17-year, $102 million. Daly said he didn't see that loophole when the cap hit was negotiated as the average annual value of a contract.
"I wish I could have closed that off," he said. "I don't think the system as a whole is broken. I think some minor adjustments will be fine."
Daly said that although he and Steve Fehr, the NHLPA's special counsel, will talk Tuesday, Commissioner Gary Bettman is not scheduled to be in Toronto.
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