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Here’s “what you need to know” about the NHLPA’s proposal to the owners

Donald Fehr

NHL Players Association executive director Donald Fehr speaks at a news conference after a meeting of the NHLPA executive board in Chicago, Wednesday, June 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Sitthixay Ditthavong)

AP

The NHLPA has published a brief recap of its proposal to the owners. We’ll just cut and paste it below. Pretty sure they won’t claim copyright infringement.

Key aspects of the proposal that were made public include:

---- Players compensation would grow at fixed rates which would result in player compensation being reduced by potentially more than $800 million over the next three seasons (depending on revenue growth)

---- A significantly expanded and simplified revenue sharing system specifically designed to help clubs in need of assistance

---- Increased flexibility for teams; will help GMs to put their teams together including awarding extra draft picks for teams in difficulty, allowing teams to trade dollars and players and in limited cases, allow for small amount of teams to go over or under the salary cap

Under the NHLPA proposal, at the end of three years, the players would have an option for a fourth which would ‘snap-back’ to the current agreement.

In essence, the players are proposing to partner with the financially stronger NHL owners to bring stability to the industry and assist those clubs that are less financially stable. In summary, the alternative proposal seeks to fix the problems that exist, instead of focusing on problems that don’t.

It’ll be interesting to see how the league maintains a unified front against the players with regards to the expanded revenue sharing system the union has proposed.

Suffice to say “less financially stable” teams would love to get more money from the “financially stronger” franchises, but first the owners will try to get as much as they can from the players.

Chances are this whole thing will end with the players taking a smaller cut of revenues and the owners agreeing to an expanded revenue-sharing system. How much of a cut and how big of an expansion is what needs to be negotiated.