Federal Mediators...they are at it again...

Today the NHL and NHLPS sat down with federal mediators to try to seek traction or an end to this damn lockout. Unfortunately they came out of the meeting with no conclusions and not even a inkling if they are going to meet tomorrow.

The thing to remember about the mediation process is that it is a lot of back and forth and until they are in the same room as each other there are no definite deals. Speculation from today says that the mediators asked what if the league put its last offer back on the table would the players agree to its core principles. That of course led to a resounding no and a lot of pissed off fans now.

Here’s hoping to more to come from this process in the coming days. Even for me it is getting frustrating....

Keep your sticks on the ice.

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