The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
As of yesterday, the NHL season has been locked out for 63 days, including 36 days of missed regular season games. The total number of games missed was 232, and the NHL and the Players Association haven't met or spoken since their last session in Toronto on September 9 ? one week before the lockout began. There are no talks scheduled to end the standoff, although the Players Association and the player's agents met yesterday for five hours, along with a handful of players. The story going around is that the players are going to come up with a proposal to submit to the NHL owners soon. Recently, Forbes magazine released a report stating that the NHL owners only lost $96 million, a far cry from the $224 million the owners claim to have lost. NHL Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Bill Daly has been answering CBA-related e-mails from fans submitted to NHLCBANEWS.com. This is what he had to say about the Forbes report: "This is not a new phenomenon (Forbes has been publishing similarly inaccurate reports for years), and, in light of the lack of information upon which the estimates were based, is not surprising. Forbes did not have access to any of the relevant financial information one would need to determine Club operating results. See 'Numbers' P.# Con't from P.# "As a result, the magazine made speculative "guesses," which are factually inaccurate. "By contrast, the independent review and report of NHL Club finances performed and issued by Arthur Levitt was based on complete and unfettered access to all relevant financial materials of both the League and all 30 Clubs. Mr. Levitt (the former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission), Lynn Turner (the former Chief Accountant for the SEC, and currently Professor and Director of the Center for Quality Financial Reporting at Colorado State University), Eisner & Company LLP, and a substantial number of independent accounting firms which audited and certified the financial statements of the NHL Clubs collectively spent 2,000 hours in preparing Mr. Levitt's independent report on the League's financial condition, and Mr. Levitt concluded that the results reported are accurate and fairly reflect the financial results of the League. Needless to say, we are fully confident that the numbers published in the Levitt Report, and as recently updated and reported by the League, completely and accurately reflect the state of the our business." In July, the NHL owners presented the players with six proposals for a new economic system, each of which were rejected almost immediately. The players countered with a luxury tax proposal, that was rejected by the owners.
