UPDATE:
Union made yet another counter offer to the league's counter offer on WED afternoon and talks are expected to resume at 8 pm.
The NHL is reviewing it.
Pensions continue to be a focal point for player unrest even though you have a half-dozen other issues still out there, including length of CBA, length of contracts, and especially, the salary cap for 2013-14 which the players insist has to go to at least $65 million.
Here's the rub on pensions: the union wants the league to subsidize it 100% and to guarantee its security. That is, who assumes liability of an owner goes to default? If a franchise moves or worse, it folds?
Lotta players feel this issue was settled on Dec. 6 and are not stunned there is no agreement.
For more, check out CSNPhilly.com tonight and tomorrow:
click here
Apologies for not posting over the newsy weekend but as some as you know, my mom took a turn for the worse on Christmas Eve, passed shortly after, and was buried on New Year's Eve.
Hence, my prolong absence. I'm back working, today.
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Within the past five days, you've seen without knowing exactly the total contents, of three offers on a n ew CBA go back and forth between the NHL and the NHLPA.
At some point today, the union will come back to the league to discuss the NHL's latest counter to the union's latest proposal.
Back and forth is good "if" they're doing it con tinually and meeting right up to the deadline which is Jan. 11, according to NHL COmmissioner Gary Bettman.
The question going into today's meeting which may not come until very late, is whether it really matters if union executive director Donald Fehr files a "disclaimer of interest" to dissolve the union.
If he does and talks continue, that tells me he is just protecting the players best interests in case this all falls apart again like it did in early December.
I think, however, it shows the owners a lot more courage for Fehr NOT to file. It says, in essence, 'we believe we're making progress, we're gonna get a deal and we don't need this distraction right now.'
Most lawyers would likely still file. But given how things have been taken personally by the league and union members during this 109-day lockout, I think it behooves everyone concerned NOT to make a filing.
The NHLPA can always do that at a later date if the CBA talks fail.
So my question to readers is, does it really matter if the union files? Will it affect the negotiations, one way or the o ther?
Here's more on CSNPhilly.com:
click here 
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