Lockout Starts 12:01AM Tonight

Gary Bettman is currently announcing the owners have voted unanimously to lockout the players when the current CBA expires at midnight tonight.

Some of his statements (not direct quotes):
- 20 teams are losing money
- Owners will leave if economic model is not changed
- We need a system that eliminates disparities in team payrolls
- No quick fixes, no band-aids
- Any system that links revenues to expenses the PA is defining as a “salary cap”, and that their definition is too loose and any system they present will be deemed a “salary cap”
- The new proposal from the PA was almost a “carbon copy” of previous proposals
- Even union admitted under the current CBA that half of teams would still lose money
- Union’s goal is to keep the status quo or get more
- Union never met with Levitt, even when offered

I “watched” it live on www.nhl.com.  My stream wasn’t very good, but we don’t have a great pipe here at work.  Video was more like a slow flipbook.  Audio was alright, sometimes stuttered, but could just be on my end.

Thanks to Mark Brender from the Hockey News for asking Bettman if he’d play hockey in July.  A nice underhanded question for us to get a timetable of how late a season could possibly start.

I hope to catch the union’s press conference later, but the afternoon does look busy, if I do, I’ll be sure to post on it.  Either way, you can see the full press releases at The Ice Block or hockeyfights.com.

Posted by David M Singer on Sep 15, 2004 at 05:09 PM

Comments:

  1. I am so damn mad about the lockout…but then again, it forces me to go watch the Phantoms were there are more hockey fights, cheaper prices, and more hockey being played than the NHL. Hmmm, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.

    Posted by Van on Sep 16, 2004 at 03:09 PM
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