NHL Proposes Meeting of Owners and Players after Unsuccessful Mediation

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

The NHL and NHLPA has once again come down to an unsuccessful attempt of negotiating terms, as the two parties attempted for two days to mediate with a new direction to consider.

Now the Commissioner Gary Bettman has posted a suggestion on Thursday, proposing that the leadership of both parties shall step down and the next bargaining session shall be arranged directly between the owners and the players of the league. There was no specific agenda of the meeting mentioned, but Bettman alleged it is perhaps another approach to break the deadlock. In response, the NHLPA promised to take the suggestion to its executive board and negotiating committee for consideration. Bettman gave his proposal after both sides failed to find a way in collective bargaining negotiations even after attempting to sit through a series of sessions with U.S. federal mediators Scot L. Beckenbaugh and John Sweeney in Woodbridge, N.J.

The statement of Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly, published on Thursday mentioned that “after spending several hours with both sides over two days, the presiding mediators concluded that the parties remained far apart, and that no progress toward a resolution could be made through further mediation at this point in time.” He added that “we are disappointed that the mediation process was not successful.”

The Executive Director of NHLPA, Donald Fehr, stated that “the mediators informed the parties that they did not think it was productive to continue the discussions further today.” He added that “the mediators indicated that they would stay in contact with the league and the NHLPA, and would call the parties back together when they thought the time was right.”