Growth of business discussed in NHL, NHLPA session

TORONTO -- The negotiating committees from the National Hockey League and National Hockey League Players' Association met Monday at the League office for the first of four scheduled days of work toward establishing a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The meeting Monday featured NHL Chief Operating Officer John Collins delivering a presentation that detailed how the League has grown the business.

"We just finished a presentation by John Collins, our chief operating officer," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "The real purpose of this session was to give the players and the Union a sense of how we've been growing the business at the league level over the last few years, the types of initiatives we've undertaken to grow the game, and how we see prospects for the future. That was really the full extent of the session."

NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr said the presentation was "informative and it was interesting. I'm certainly glad they did that."

The negotiations resume Tuesday at the NHLPA's offices. The Union is expected to make its initial formal proposal on the core economic issues at that time.

The NHL's owners made their proposal on the core economic issues to the Union on July 13. Commissioner Bettman said this past week in New York that the League's owners are not prepared to operate another season under the terms of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which expires Sept. 15.

Fehr said Monday that the Union's proposal will not be a counter-proposal to the League's offer, but instead is "an alternative view as to what we should do next."

"I'm interested, very interested," Commissioner Bettman said of the Union's expected proposal. "We'll have to wait and see. I'm not going to try and speculate as to what they're going to present [Tuesday]. I have no idea."

Fehr said, "This is really a bit of a different kind of approach. It's how the players see the world."

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