NHL Lockout 2012: NHLPA To Give Another Proposal Soon?

According to Andy Strickland, the NHLPA is working on another CBA proposal to present to the league in an attempt for the two sides to find some type of common ground to try and get a deal done.

Yesterday, the NHL cancelled the schedule for the first two weeks of the season. Just to clarify here, they cancelled the first two scheduled weeks, not the first two weeks of games, so if an agreement is made before the 24th the league would still try to get an 82-game schedule in.

But that wasn't going to happen until the NHLPA finally made a counter offer. To this point, the NHL side of these negotiations has felt as though they're the only side making proposals and concessions, and in truth, that's been the case to this point.

The NHLPA never gave a second offer, they just "revised" their first offer once, something that's stalled meetings since the NHL owners (rightfully) don't want to negotiate against themselves.

But reportedly that's about to change now.

Currently, the NHLPA is looking for a 54.3% share of the HRR, while the owners want the players to take 49%. That's not a major difference, and it's embarrassing that both sides allowed things to go this far over the inability to negotiate through five percentage points.

You've heard that these negotiations are "light years" ahead of the last rounds in 2004, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow the fact that the NHL just removed two weeks worth of scheduling.

The good news? Gary Bettman only overhauled two weeks. And he did it without actually removing games, a sign of good faith to the NHLPA that the owners expect to get a deal done and expect to get one done soon.

Hopefully he's right.