Mediators resign: NHL proposes that players and owners meet without Fehr and Bettman

Federal mediators stopped trying to help the NHL and NHLPA after just 12 hours of talk over two days last week. They are at a standstill in their collective bargaining. It says here that the mediation attempt was simply part of a larger process. If negotiations progress to the point of union decertification, both parties will need to point out the fact that they negotiated in good faith through mediation. However, from the failure of the mediation a new idea has arisen.

So far, the negotiations between the two sides have not gone well, no matter how they have structured the groups. Small and even individual meetings between NHL and NHLPA bargaining directors Bettman, Daly, Fehr and Fehr have done little. Large meetings that included both owners and players have also failed to advance the negotiations. One thing is clear; nothing has worked to bring these two sides together so far. But there has always been a constant in these encounters. The heads of negotiation have always been present. Today, the owners proposed that the players meet with them without any of the four main negotiators.

This could help negotiations for a couple of reasons. First, the owners are said to dislike, even hate, NHLPA director Donald Fehr, even more than they hated former NHLPA chief Bob Goodenow. We know that the objective of the previous lockdown was not only to win the negotiation on the players and to install a salary cap. The owners and Gary Bettman wanted to make sure Goodenow could no longer remain as head of the NHLPA for future collective bargaining negotiations. The owners and Bettman achieved a landslide victory on all fronts, or so they thought. Now Donald Fehr is so hated, but he has prepared his players for negotiation even better than Goodenow as there are fewer cracks showing between players than under Goodenow. Getting Fehr out of the bedroom could be a positive move because he has become a proverbial roadblock for many of the homeowners. Any personal revenge could be temporarily put aside so that owners could communicate directly with players without fear of their words or intentions being twisted.

Second, NHL players generally don’t like Gary Bettman. Defender Ian White recently insulted Bettman and the work he has done most recently, calling him an “idiot.” Players, rightly or wrongly, blame Bettman for many of the game’s ills, citing excessive expansion into poor hockey markets and numerous work stoppages over his tenure and major flaws. By taking Bettman out of the boardroom, perhaps players can speak freely with the owners to voice their concerns, while also hearing the concerns of the owners as sole proprietorships rather than a vilified deity.

Lastly, perhaps by eliminating the main negotiators, a moderate player leader and a moderate owner can help bridge the gap between the two parties with a common sense approach. The late Harley Hotchkiss, former owner of Calgary Flames, was one of those owners. Hotchkiss had great respect between the players, which allowed an element of trust to enter the discussions between the two parties. From a player’s perspective, several in the past have stepped out of the ranks in an attempt to move the negotiations forward. Both Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux intervened as former players in an attempt to end the 2004-05 lockout. Trevor Linden inevitably stepped in as president of the NHLPA to help end the 2005 lockout.

Hopefully this proposed meeting will increase the levels of communication and trust to complete a deal, so that we can all get back to hockey.

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