Columnist: Negotiating silence isn’t so golden this week

Last week, many observers were pleased that the NHL and NHLPA weren’t providing many quips as lengthy negotiating sessions took place.

Yet with no plans for a meeting as of Tuesday, CSNNE.com’s Joe Haggerty argues that silence isn’t such a positive thing this week.

Haggerty points out that the next missed pay period is coming on Thursday (Nov. 15), which might explain this inflammatory quote from an anonymous source.

“It is complete [expletive],” said one fired up hockey source as nothing has come from last week’s marathon negotiating sessions. “There is a deal that could be done in a day. Both sides should be shot for how they have conducted this negotiation.”

Haggerty believes that some were waiting for Thursday to pass – when 20 percent of season earnings have gone by the wayside – to kick off the real negotiations.

Here’s one informal deadline according to Haggerty:

Even better the NHL is starting to hit a point in the hockey calendar when starting on Dec. 1 becomes problematic. The NHL and NHLPA have roughly a week to get a new CBA hammered out, and begin training camps around the league immediately following Thanksgiving. One expects there will be one last legitimate effort from both sides to nail down a deal before they turn December into more NHL scorched earth.

Haggerty also thinks that the 2013 All-Star Game has already become a “lockout casualty,” even if though that hasn’t been made official.

Read his column for more interesting talk that vacillates between hopeful and depressing, but at least he ends on a (somewhat) positive note:

All of this doom and gloom could go away as soon as Friday if the breakthrough happens that so many people – aside from those leading the NHL and NHLPA, of course – can envision so very easily. It remains to be seen whether that will actually happen, and take the godforsaken lockout talk with it.