Posted on 06/08/2005 7:21:09 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
TORONTO -- The NHL and the NHL Players' Association have agreed on a salary-cap system, eliminating the biggest stumbling block to the resumption of play next season, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported on its Web site Wednesday.
The paper reported that a source close to the owners, and another close to both owners and players, said there would be a team-by-team salary cap, based on a percentage of the revenue of each franchise.
In what is believed to be a six-year agreement, based on revenue projections by both sides, the salary cap will range from $34 million to $36 million, with the floor from $22 million to $24 million.
The league has previously demanded that the cap be 54 percent of a team's revenue.
However, this does not mean that an overall deal on the lockout is imminent. Negotiators for the players and owners are now working on other issues such as salary arbitration and free agency, according to GlobeandMail.com.
"They still have a ways to go," one source told the paper, although with the cap issue settled there is reason to hope a deal can be reached by early July.
NHL vice-president Bill Daly, the league's chief negotiator, declined to confirm or deny reports of a salary-cap deal.
But he did say publicly on Tuesday that negotiators had moved on to other issues, including salary arbitration, free agency, qualifying contract offers and others.
The lockout caused the cancellation of the 2004-05 season.
NHL will no longer be a major league sport, IMHO.
And this is why unions are bad. Example: the NHL.
Don't forget UAW either. Just lost 25,000 workers.
Plus, there's the teacher's unions. After the Department of Education was formed and the NEA was made (along with the other teacher's unions), the education of this country plummeted to horrendous lows.
I agree with you on that one. Here in Canada the resurgence of the CFL (they'll probably expand to Halifax withing two years) and the renewed interest in amateur and junior hockey will probably kill off the NHL.
What's the NHL?
ping
And yet oddly enough, this is exactly why it will be the best team sport of all. Hockey has always been a "cult" sport with fan support that was very narrow but extremely deep. The NHL was ruined in the mid-1990s when they tried to take this "cult" sport and turn it into a "popular" sport like the NBA or NFL. The quality of play in both of those sports has declined considerably over the years as these two leagues have tried to maintain their appeal among fans who aren't serious followers of the games.
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