NHLPA To Meet Alone After Delaying Meeting With League

The NHLPA is "going ahead with today’s business planning session" after postponing a joint meeting with the NHL, according to Allan Maki of the Toronto GLOBE & MAIL.  Today's meeting is "aimed at ways to better market the game and promote the players.”  Sources said that the NHLPA was “sending a message by ‘uninviting the league.’”  It was “suggested the [NHLPA] has its own ideas on how to promote its members and that postponing the joint meeting was as much an act of defiance as a show of strength -- a way for the NHLPA to demonstrate it has recovered from the chaos and firing" of former Exec Dir Ted Saskin.  NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, in an e-mail, said that the league was “‘disappointed the meeting was called off’ and unsure why that happened.”  Daly: “We certainly hope it was a postponement as opposed to a cancellation” (Toronto GLOBE & MAIL, 7/24).