NHL, Players' Assn. Deny Agreement; 'L.A. Times' Stands by its Report

By: Shawn Moynihan While the NHL and the players' association are close to reaching a new collective bargaining agreement, both sides deny the Los Angeles Times' reports that the two sides have struck a deal. The paper's deputy sports editor told E&P Friday that it stands by its story.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times, citing "sources familiar with the negotiations," reported that both sides had agreed to terms that would end the lockout that cancelled all of last season. But the league and the union said that is premature.

"The press report that the NHL and the NHLPA (the union) have an agreement in principle is simply not true," NHL spokeswoman Bernadette Mansur said in a statement. Players' association spokesman Jonathan Weatherdon told the Associated Press Thursday, "The report is inaccurate."

But on Friday, Deputy Sports Editor Dave Morgan told E&P the L.A. Times maintains that its information is correct, if not wholly exact, as some details are still being finalized. About a dozen items remain in flux, he said.

"Might a percentage point move up or down? I'm confident in the numbers," he said. "Based on our reporting and what we're seeing ... these are some of the numbers they're working with." Morgan added that no one from the NHL or the players' association has contacted his newspaper to complain.

The agreement, the L.A. Times reported Thursday, features a hard cap linked to 54% of league revenue, a 24% rollback in existing player contracts and qualifying offers, and a provision that would prevent any one player from earning more than one-fifth of the team's cap figure in any given year. The paper also reported the deal includes a provision in which 15% of every player's paycheck would go into an escrow account until revenue is calculated following each season.

Although Morgan admits some of these numbers may change slightly, they add up to what he calls an agreement in principle.

"I don't think it's a big leap from 'an agreement in principle' to 'a done deal,'" he explained. "It's down to the fine tuning."

Despite the recent controversies surrounding anonymous sourcing, Morgan said he felt confident going forward with the report "because we have a copy of the document with the numbers on it that we're going with. You don't just go into these things, and get one piece of info and go forward with it."

Morgan noted that a contrite Sean Avery of the Los Angeles Kings even called L.A. Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke out of the blue on Wednesday and referred to a pending labor agreement the player called "a done deal." During that call, Avery told Plaschke, "We burned a year for nothing. We didn't win anything. We didn't prove anything. We didn't get anything. We wasted an entire season."

Last year, the NHL became the first major professional sports league to lose an entire season to a labor dispute.