Off Wing Opinion

As Larry Brooks suspected a few weeks back, it looks like the NHL is going to take advantage of baseball's All-Star break to announce an end to the lockout:

An extended session between the NHL and NHL Players' Association, which started at Noon et on Tuesday, is apparently continuing and should soon produce the agreement that would be the catalyst to ending the 301-day labour dispute, the longest in the history of North American professional sports.

In addition, the NHLPA is having a noon et conference call with its player representatives.

I'll be awaiting my regular e-mail communication from Jonathan Weatherdon of the NHLPA sometime today. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Marc Hoff and Jay Kumar for the heads up.

UPDATE: Mr. Weatherdon was right on cue at 12:30 p.m. U.S. EDT:

NHLPA AND NHL REACH AGREEMENT IN PRINCIPLE ON NEW COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT

TORONTO/NEW YORK (July 13, 2005): The National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association have reached an agreement in principle on the terms of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Details of the new Agreement will not be made available publicly pending the formal ratification process by NHLPA Members and the NHL Board of Governors.

It is anticipated that the ratification process will be completed next week, at which time the parties will be prepared to discuss the details of the Agreement and plans for next season. No further comment will be made until then.

Expect further updates, as we embark on the strangest offseason in NHL history.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's the schedule for awarding Sidney Crosby to the New York Rangers:

A prominent player agent told ESPN The Magazine's E.J. Hradek that the draft lottery will be held on July 21, with the entry draft being held in Ottawa on July 30.

Some advice to Commissioner Bettman: Apparently keeping the ping pong balls for the Rangers in a freezer the night before the draft will be all you need to get this right.

BETWEEN PERIODS UPDATE: Checking out all the NHL blogs. Here's Mike Chen:

Many are calling for the head of Gary Bettman. Many are calling for the head of Bob Goodenow. They are both at fault here - Bettman, for not tempering the irresistable temptation of grabbing expansion money fast and furious, for not instituting a competition committee sooner, for blindly saying "The game is great!" for so many years. Goodenow, on the other hand, made one big stupid mistake. He refused to budge on the salary cap.

I want to assure everyone that I'm typing as fast as I can. Here's the mighty James Mirtle from last night in Toronto:

The Toronto Sun has jumped the gun with their coverage, dedicating today's front to the fact that Bettman wants to add an additional four teams to the playoffs each year (and a whole new playoff round). Tom Benjamin has been fond lately of saying that Bettman has no new revenue streams to tap, although by inventing additional games to be played, the commish just may have outsmarted him in this regard (unfortunately).

One side effect of the extra playoff round: Finishing up top means that much more (you get to play a squad that just played a few extra games while your team healed up), and sneaking into the playoffs at the bottom will get you punished. Sounds like a formula to both raise revenue, and make it more likely that the top teams will last into what will now be the third round of the playoffs.

More to come.

UPDATES KEEP COMING: Here's the Rodent from last night on how life may change for your the league's GMs:

The big market G/M will now resort to an alternative he didn't consider before. Look at the way it worked under the previous CBA. There were two recruiting mentalities:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 12:23 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.