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.
The National Hockey League and NHL Players' Association met for four hours on Wednesday in New York to discuss the collective bargaining agreement. It was their first meeting since May 25 in Tampa Bay during the Stanley Cup final. The current agreement expires on September 15, and both sides are preparing for a lockout. Yesterday, NHL offices held meetings to discuss the possibility of massive layoffs in the event of a lockout. The meeting lasted for four hours, as the NHL presented six different concepts for a new system that would achieve the objectives of the league in the bargaining process. See 'Bargaining' P.# Con't from P.# Each concept was fundamentally different, and not all included a salary cap. "What we have said to the union all along is that there are a lot of different ways to do this," said NHL Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Bill Daly to the media after the meeting. "There are certain objectives we need to achieve and we are committed to achieving those objectives, but there are a lot of different ways to skin this cat. Today's meeting was about trying to give the union some sense of the different ideas we had in mind." After the meeting, the player's union asked the owners for more detailed information on the concepts. "I think today was good in the sense that we had a good candid dialogue and we have to continue to work at it," said Daly. "We remain hopeful that if we continue to work at it, good things will happen." The next meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday, August 4th.
