No Progress in NHL Lockout

September 18, 2012

No progress has been made in the NHL lockout with no talks scheduled between the league and the player association.

The NHL locked the players out over the weekend, when the collective bargaining agreement expired at Saturday. It’s the NHL’s fourth lock out in the last 20 years.

NHL Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly, and NHLPA special counsel, Steve Fehr, have spoken informally since the lockout began, and could do so again today. However, no official talks will take place before Wednesday.

The two sides haven’t met for face-to-face talks since last Wednesday.

The league could start to announce this week the cancellation of preseason games and. The regular season is scheduled to begin October 11, but is in jeopardy.

“This is a time of year for all attention to be focused on the ice, not on a meeting room,” the league said. “The league, the clubs and the players all have a stake in resolving our bargaining issues appropriately and getting the puck dropped as soon as possible. We owe it to each other, to the game and, most of all, to the fans.”

The lockout has already had significant impact on several NHL clubs. The Ottawa Senators, for example, have already had layoffs and full-time staff have been placed on a reduced work week, according to club president, Cyril Leeder.

“Every full-time, every part-time employee is affected by a work stoppage,” Leeder said. “On the full-time employees, they’ve either been laid off temporarily or gone to a four-day work week.”

Leeder said a ”significant number” of employees had been laid off.

“This really is the area that I worry about the most,” Leeder said. ”It’s not good for anybody when we have a work stoppage and the people most affected are our staff here.”{jcomments on}