Full NHL season unlikely: Bettman

NEW YORK—NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman still hasn’t heard what he wants from the players’ association, so he won’t return to the bargaining table and he won’t play a full hockey season.
With only one day remaining before the league’s self-imposed deadline to reach a deal that would ensure an 82-game season, Bettman revealed yesterday that he has given up hope of a complete slate of games.

“Unfortunately, it looks like an 82-game season is not going to be a reality,” he said.
Speaking at a news conference yesterday announcing the N.Y. Islanders’ move from Nassau Coliseum to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center in 2015, Bettman seemed resigned to a shortened season with the NHL and the players’ association still at odds after months of negotiations.
Instead of a celebration, a pall was cast over the event as the lockout approached its 40th day.
The NHL is close to another announcement that games will be wiped off the schedule for good.
Bettman stated, in making the NHL’s most recent offer, that a deal needed to be in place by today for the season to begin Nov. 2 and be played in full.
No negotiations are scheduled this week—or anytime soon.
“The fact of the matter is there are just sometimes that you need to take time off because it’s clear that you can’t do anything to move the process forward,” Bettman reasoned.
“We’re at one of those points right now because we gave our very best offer,” he noted. “That offer, for better or for worse, was contingent on playing an 82-game season.
“So I think things actually, in some respects, may get more difficult.”
The players’ association reached out to the NHL on Tuesday night in an attempt to set up a face-to-face bargaining session yesterday, but the league declined.
The NHL’s position is if the union isn’t willing to talk about the league’s offer that’s on the table, and isn’t prepared to make a new proposal of its own working off that offer, there is no reason to talk.
“There seems to be no interest in making any sort of deal along the lines of what we have expressed a desire and a need for,” Bettman said.
The union wants anything and everything open for discussion. Bettman wouldn’t agree to those terms, so the hockey season remains in peril.
“The players made multiple core-economic proposals on Tuesday that were a significant move in the owners’ direction,” union executive director Donald Fehr said in a statement last night.
“We are, and continue to be, ready to meet to discuss how to resolve our remaining differences, with no preconditions,” Fehr added.
“At the same time they are refusing to meet, they are winding the clock down to yet another artificial deadline they created,” he remarked.
A partial season still is a possibility, and the NHL hasn’t called off any marquee events such as the outdoor Winter Classic on New Year’s Day or the all-star game.
That could change in a hurry.
“I’m not going to give you an exact timetable, but at some point in November we will have to commit many millions of dollars to get ready for the Winter Classic,” said Bettman.x