For NHL, a joint effort to resume
League, players take collaborative approach
Collaboration or bust.
Given the gravity of the new coronavirus pandemic and the abrupt decision to place the NHL season on pause in March, it didn’t take commissioner Gary Bettman and union chief Don Fehr long to realize they were going to have to work together if play was to resume any time soon.
Nearly four months to the day since the last puck dropped, the two sides put aside past differences to have a return-to-play plan in place, and the assurance of labor peace through September 2026 to go with it.
“When we got to March 12 and decided to take the pause, that
began a period of perhaps unprecedented collaboration and problem solving,” Bettman said during a Zoom conference call with reporters Saturday, a day after the league and players ratified a 24-team expanded playoff, set to begin Aug. 1, and a four-year extension of the collective bargaining agreement.
“It was a recognition by both sides that we were being confronted with an incredibly difficult, a novel, unprecedented situation. I believed we would get to this point because it was the right thing to do for the game and for everybody involved in the game.”
Fehr, the NHL Players’ Association executive director, not only agreed with Bettman, but went out of his way to credit the owners for the approach.
“I was persuaded well before the end of March that not only was this different, but it was being approached in a fundamentally different way. I always thought we
NHL Players’ Association executive director Donald Fehr, left, and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in 2015. would find a way to reach an agreement,” Fehr said.
The bond established between the two was apparent during the 55-minute session, with Fehr agreeing with Bettman and then acknowledging how unusual that was by saying: “I think that indicates something about the approach that was taken in these talks.”
And not only is hockey on the verge of returning — training camps are set to open Monday — the CBA extension assures 12 straight years of labor peace, the NHL’s longest stretch since Bettman took over in 1993. During that time, play has been halted three times by lockouts, the last in 2012-13, when the season was shortened to 48 games.
“I think Don and I both recognize labor peace was something we couldn’t even quantify how important it was,” Bettman said. “But we both knew that for the business of the game to come back strong, there was enough disruption going
on in the world that we didn’t have to add to it.”
Fehr said the months-long talks to reach a solution were a matter of perseverance.
“This is a very bad analogy, but you have to sort of navigate the kayak in a storm until the storm’s over, and then make sure the kayak isn’t full of holes so that you can go on and sail it in calmer seas,” Fehr said in a separate interview with The AP. “Or to put it another way there was never any pretense that this was business as usual.”
Owners benefit because they can generate muchneeded revenue through sponsorships and advertising, even though games will be played in empty arenas.
Though players will likely lose a portion of their salaries for seasons to come to make up for the 50-50 split of revenue, they benefit from a CBA that includes the possibility of returning to the Olympics, after the NHL opted out from the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea. The new labor agreement also addressed players’ demands to gain a post-career subsidy for health care.