First of all, Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. Go out and have a few brews, kick back and relax.
Ok, now the bad news.
It seems as though Gary Bettman has sent a couple of memos to the teams. One invited them to a Board of Governors meeting on April 20th. The other may have informed the owners that the window of opportunity to negotiate a deal is quickly closing, and may close within the next two weeks. Sportsnet released a story about the memos, and indicated that both may be calculated moves towards using replacement players next season.
You can read more on this here.
This all could be posturing by the NHL. As I have mentioned, the NHLPA has indicated that they feel no pressure to make a deal. These reports might be ploys by Bettman to try and make the players sweat a bit. Bob McKenzie at TSN thinks that the ball is in the owners' court, though.
While Bettman might be trying to put pressure on the players, he may be feeling some pressure of his own from the owners. Al Strachan of the Toronto Sun writes that the owners could be pushing Bettman to get a deal done. Not only are they concerned about money, they are concerned with losing prospects they drafted a few years ago.
"Under the terms of the old collective bargaining agreement . . . those taken in 2003 go back into the draft pool if they have not signed with their NHL teams by June 1."
Speaking of Mr. Strachan, he also wrote an article about how that "blue ice" I mentioned yesterday is not good for HDTV.
Spector defends the NHL'ers playing in Europe, and clarifies the use of the term "scab".
Scott Burnside at ESPN talks about Dan Blackburn, and the difficult path he is traveling trying to get back to the NHL.
Enjoy the holiday. Remember, don't drink and drive.
HDH
Posted by Jim at March 17, 2005 09:32 AMeMail this entry!
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