The players and owners are still deadlocked when it comes to getting a deal done to rescue the 2012 NHL season. Last week hopes got high that a deal would be struck and hockey would return. The hype now appears to have been a ploy by Gary Bettman to release what looked like a reasonable deal to the public and make the NHLPA look bad when they rejected it. There was two major points that the new proposal got hung up on. First, a 50/50 revenue split was deemed fair by both sides but the players want the decrease ( they were getting 57% in the old CBA) to gradually take place over several seasons. The owners want this change to take place immediately and to impact current contract. That brings us to the second refusal by the players. Players want the current player contracts to be honored by the owners as opposed to to dollar figures changing in accordance with the new revenue sharing model. As of right now no more talks have taken place since the players counter proposals were shot down. The players notified the NHL that they are ready to negotiate further, but no further meetings have been established. Bettman declared that Thursday 10/25 was the last day a new CBA could be agreed upon to ensure a full schedule to begin on 11/2. Some players believe that they have up to a week of wiggle room to hammer out a deal beyond the Thursday deadline. One thing is certain, if a deal is not complete very soon the hockey drought will continue much past Nov. 2.
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