Fehr said neither side is using the negotiations to restart the season to get an economic advantageGETTY IMAGES
NHL player escrow is part of the on-going discussions to restart the season, NHLPA Exec Dir Don Fehr told THE DAILY. "If there's going to be an overall deal there will be provisions in it that will relate to the escrow issue, that is all I can say," Fehr said last night. Fehr made the statement in response to a question of if there are any money issues in the on-going talks to hold a 24-team playoff season, as announced by NHL Commissioner Bettman on Tuesday. The NHL has a hard salary cap, where each side gets 50% of the revenues and players pay a portion of their paychecks into the escrow. In normal times, at the end of the season, there is an accounting and players may get back some of the money escrowed, depending on revenues. Since the season was suspended in March some believe players may owe millions to the clubs because of the loss of revenue. Asked if players are looking for some relief on that, Fehr said yes. "I would expect the escrow issues will be part of the discussion, but that is all I will say about it," he said. He also cautioned not to "read too much into" the issue.
NOT USING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE: Fehr made clear that neither side is using the negotiations to restart the season to get an economic advantage over the other side and that this negotiation is nothing like anything he has experienced in 43 years at bargaining tables. "What you normally do is you come in and you say, 'I would like XYZ out of the bargaining,'" he said. "The other side says, 'No, I want ABC.' You can resort to economic pressures -- strike or lockout or the threat of it -- and you eventually get a deal. But the rest of the world is going on." He added, "In this case, this isn't caused by anything we did or anything the owners did. And we are not in control of it, the health authorities are and the future is not knowable. We don't know, for example, whether the revenues next year are going to be fine or by 10 percent or more than that. It's a fundamentally different thing than I have ever been involved in before and, i think that anybody has."
NEGOTIATING PHASE: Doctors hired by the NHL and the NHLPA as well as staff at the union and the league worked out the health protocols, which include quarantines, masks and social distancing for players returning to clubs for voluntary workouts, which is phase two of the plan to play a 24-team playoff schedule. Agreements on phase 3, training camp, and phase 4, resumption of play, still have to be negotiated, Fehr said. Asked how negotiations for those phases were going, he said, "We are starting with the benefit of phase two having been done." Fehr would not characterize what might be the biggest obstacle to getting a deal done on the other two phases, but said it could be any number of things. "We just go through, day by day, all the issues that arise," Fehr said. "And obviously they are health-related; they are facility-related; they are business-related; they are financial-loss related," he said. He noted it does not make sense to say one issue is likely a bigger stumbling block because "it's not the nature of the discussion," Fehr said. "It's not something in which people are coming in and saying, 'Unless we have unlimited free agency' or them coming in and saying 'Unless we have a terrible salary cap' -- we are never going to have a deal. It's everybody trying to figure a way through a difficult situation that nobody had a hand in and nobody can control."
DO YOUR BEST: There is not a deadline to get anything negotiated, Fehr said, other than as soon as possible. There also is no set of circumstances, such as 10 players getting infected with the virus, that could trigger the end of play. "If a player or somebody on staff or somebody in a hotel or somebody in your profession interviewing players ... if somebody tests positive or somebodies over a period of time, you consult with the doctors and the public health authorities wherever you are and you take whatever steps are indicated," Fehr said. "Nobody is going to make a judgment as to what those are ahead of time, and you shouldn't. The understanding is we are going to do what the health officials tell us." Fehr also would not handicap the chances of getting a deal completed to begin playing hockey again. "All I can tell you is I hope we will be able to resume and have as normal as possible a season next year but that is all contingent as to whether the public health considerations make it possible," he said. "That's what I mean by we are not in control of it. If you were to ask me a different question: What is the most important thing you are talking about? That is the health and safety of the players and their families and all the rest of the staff, from the NHL and our office and broadcasters and people in your business. That is priority 1, 2, 3 and 4. Everything else is after that."
