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.
Tuesday on TSN, NHL lockout negotiators Bill Daly (NHL) and Ted Saskin (NHLPA) appeared on The Hot Seat - a one-hour special where the two faced tough, pointed questions from TSN Hockey Insider Bob McKenzie, TSN play-by-play voice Gord Miller and Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox. Daly and Saskin were interviewed separately and were not able to hear each other's answers. The following are excerpts from The Hot Seat with Bill Daly. We will have excerpts from Ted Saskin tomorrow. For the complete transcript, log on to www.tsn.ca. Bill Daly - NHL Executive VP & Chief Legal Officer Q - Bob McKenzie: Bill, isn't the NHL's demand for cost certainty really an admission that the individual owners can't run their business in a proper fashion? That they're either too competitive, or they're too stupid, or some combination of both, that there has to be a foolproof system in place where they can't lose money? A - Daly: I don't think so, only because, what I'll say is, clubs make different decisions for different reasons, based on different sets of circumstances. They make decisions that arguably are in their own best interests and I certainly understand that. The problem with our system is that those individual decisions made by individual clubs necessarily impact the businesses of 29 other clubs, and that creates a league problem, and then a league problem has to be addressed through collective bargaining. Q - Damien Cox: The union leadership has made it clear that it's not going to take any paycheques, at least for the foreseeable future. Are you getting paid, is Gary Bettman getting paid, is the league leadership being paid right now? A - Daly: Yes, the league leadership is being paid, at the desire of our ownership. Q - Gord Miller: How can you get the players to believe your numbers. I mean the players have shot down the Levitt report. How can you get the players to believe that you're losing this money. They don't believe you. A - Daly: Unfortunately, we've done everything within our power to try to get the players to believe our numbers. It's really the union that's responsible here, not the players...we're done talking about our numbers. There are no issues with respect to the financial losses facing this league, and anybody who's involved in this industry in a meaningful way knows this league is hurting. So the Players' Association - schizophrenic in their views as they always are - don't want to acknowledge it at this point and that's their problem and not ours. Q - McKenzie: Bill, what's the drop dead date for when we lose this hockey season? A - Daly: We don't have a drop dead date in mind, Bob, we're 100 per cent committed to the negotiation process. Q - McKenzie: So are you saying that if on March 1st you got an agreement there could still be a National Hockey League regular season? A - Daly: I'm not saying anything. I'm saying we're going to negotiate until we have an agreement, then we're going to take a look at the calendar and see what makes sense for the league, for the clubs, for the players and for the fans.
