League makes new offer to NHLPA

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With the clock ticking to save any remnants of an NHL season, the league has made a new offer to the NHLPA.

The NHL made a new collective bargaining proposal to the players association on Thursday afternoon. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly released a statement earlier today, Day 104 of the lockout, regarding the proposal.

In light of media reports this morning, I can confirm that we delivered to the Union a new, comprehensive proposal for a successor CBA late yesterday afternoon. We are not prepared to discuss the details of our proposal at this time. We are hopeful that once the Union's staff and negotiating committee have had an opportunity to thoroughly review and consider our new proposal, they will share it with the players. We want to be back on the ice as soon as possible.

According to a TSN.ca report, the league has moved on a few things, including increasing the maximum contract length from five to six years (it remains at seven if a team is re-signing its own player). The report also said that the make whole provision of 300 million, the one that commissioner Gary Bettman said was supposedly off the table earlier this month, is still there. TSNs Pierre LeBrun also reported further details on the proposal.

Anything right now well take, as far as moving (the process) along here, said Troy Brouwer prior to the conference call. Guys want to get back to playing hockey. We know the timeline here is getting squished pretty substantially. If somethings going to happen, its going to happen in the next week or 10 days. Right now, players dont know what it all entails. But in the next few days Im sure therell be some talks going on, if nothing else, about this proposal.

The players, who talked among themselves via an NHLPA conference call this afternoon, have a lot of information to review; the proposal is nearly 300 pages long.

Seeing that it was a 288-page document, it will take a day or so for the NHLPA staff to review and get clarification where necessary, Blackhawks forward Jamal Mayers said. Im hopeful this will finally lead to real negotiations to get back on the ice.

The league has been adamant that, if there is a season, a minimum of 48 games must be played. The two sides have not talked since the middle of December, when they met with federal mediators in New Jersey. Games are currently canceled through Jan. 14.

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