Begining of the End

Today the NHLPA made a huge step towards the owners in their new proposal. According to sources and some quick number crunching the proposal is only 1.26m per team apart on the economics of a new deal.
In the new proposal the players are asking for another 180mil on the make whole provision to cover the losses due to the lockout..kinda fair saying that it was the owners who locked them out.

The biggest shift came in the area of the players moving off of the idea of guaranteed money to a % based revenue system. if this goes through the proposal will last for 5 years. Donald Fehr says that this was "about as good as we can do" the key word there being about.
more updates to come as the day goes on Gary Bettman will comment at 1pm on the new proposal.

I feel optimistic that this is at least the start of being able to put this behind us and watching these guys skate for once instead of behind a podium. who knows maybee Mr. Bettman will accept this heres hoping

UPDATE: according to some sources players had to convince Fher this was the way to go on the proposal and Bettman will respond at 130 now instead of 1. The only thing that might derail this is the extra 180 mil but I feel players are willing to move a bit

Till i hear more lets keep the sticks on the ice

Couple of points.

First of all.
Today the players and NHL are meeting today for the first time since Oct. 18th. As of about 1115 eastern time I've heard it reported that the sides are still meeting. If so if I'm not mistaken this may be the longest any meeting has gone to date. I hope this is something to be hopeful of.

Second point
Reports this week also surfaced that the hearing with the Quebec labor board will be scheduled Dec 6-7th hopefully those days won't be needed

What to take from these points things are moving unfortunately slower than us fans would like but they are moving.