The NHL forecast calls for more stalemate, lost revenue, no Winter Classic, and scrambling for side jobs. Loquacious Canadiens blueliner PK Subban may have found his calling. (Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photography/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s the end of October and the owners’ locks remain on the doors of all NHL facilities. The most interesting news from the battlefront so far this week is that NHLPA Executive Director Don Fehr traveled to Minnesota on Tuesday to meet with players and review the stalemated CBA negotiations.

Reading some of the coverage of Fehr’s visit, like this story from Bruce Brothers of The St. Paul Pioneer-Press, it’s obvious that some of the players are angry, or at least bordering on it. And, as Michael Russo of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote, some players are concerned about the long-term impact that the lockout will have on their careers. Those reactions are realities of the situation, but they don’t seem to have appreciably dented the union’s resolve.

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Detroit’s Comerica Park was set to host games between NHL alumni in addition to major junior, college, high school and youth teams. (Dave Reginek/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

It’s Day 45 of the lockout, and the NHL season is still being held hostage. The owners and players are not talking and optimism remains in short supply. Each side claims it is the one that has made concessions and it accuses the other of wanting the lockout and being unwilling to compromise. Meanwhile, the schedule has started to evaporate and, as Helene Elliott wrote in The Los Angeles Times, “The NHL put the ‘no’ in November and continued its determined march toward irrelevance by canceling games through Nov. 30.”

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Any color you like, as long as it’s black: Commissioner Gary Bettman has been the NHL’s point man for an “our way or the highway” strategy in the now stalemated collective bargaining talks with the NHLPA. (Mary Altaffer/AP Photos)

By Stu Hackel

Time to cue up Marvin Gaye singing “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” and get ready for the NHL’s version of The Big Chill.

That’s what’s in store for hockey fans as the league’s most recent deadline for a new CBA came and went Thursday night and the owners swiped their latest offer to the players off the table, canceled all NHL games scheduled through the end of November, could be on the verge of also axing both the Winter Classic and the All-Star Game and, most likely, triggering a long, cold stretch in which very little or nothing will happen to end the lockout.

With the league uninterested in scheduling any talks with the NHLPA, button up your overcoats.

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A brighter future for the Blue Jackets is just beginning to unfold in Columbus. (Jamie Sabau/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Click on the Blue Jackets website and you’ll see John Davidson on the start page, the design of which looks strikingly like a campaign ad.

Is JD running for office? Senator Davidson? President Davidson?

Well, Ohio is a battleground state in next month’s general election, with the parties spending an inordinate amount of resources to win its 18 electoral votes, so maybe the Blue Jackets’ image consultants (or web designer) believes that the political motif is the best, most familiar way to get through to the team’s fan base.

Or maybe this team has launched a campaign of its own, one to win its fans back. If so, it could have no better standard bearer.

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The Islanders’ future home was designed for basketball and concerts, not hockey. (David Dow/NBAE/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Gary Bettman is not worried. The seating capacity for hockey games at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center could be the smallest in the NHL. The commissioner said, as far as he’s concerned, “It’s not an issue.”

But it may not entirely be a non-issue, either.

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Some people are speculating that the NHL owners really think of NHLPA leader Donald Fehr as a kind of intractable bogeyman who must be worked around, not with, if a new CBA is to be reached. (Photo by Sitthixay Ditthavong/AP)

By Stu Hackel

If the NHL owners hoped to get the NHLPA to reconsider their most recent offer, they may have just — by blunder or intention — pushed the players further away.

Tuesday, on the eve of the NHL’s deadline to reach a deal to save a full 82-game season, the owners rejected an invitation from the players to resume negotiations. “That is unfortunate as it is hard to make progress without talking,” said NHLPA special counsel Steve Fehr.

And last week, without telling the NHLPA that it was doing so, the league permitted club executives to speak to players about their offer presented a week ago Tuesday.

A gag order against commenting publicly about the lockout and the CBA negotiations has been in place for all NHL personnel. Additionally, players and their teams are normally prohibited from having any contact during a lockout, which is why players cannot use their teams’ facilities and interact with coaches. It’s a precaution the league takes because certain discussions of the issues in the dispute can be illegal, so it’s best to avoid contact completely.

But for a 48-hour period last week, the NHL allowed the clubs to communicate with the players, within certain guidelines that did not violate the law. (Yahoo! Sports obtained the league office’s memo to the teams and part of it has been published on the Puck Daddy blog.) The stated idea was to answer questions that the players might have about the offer and permit team execs to express their views and opinions of it.

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Together again: Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin played their first game together as Dynamo Moscow teammates on Oct. 22. (Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

Let’s take a break from lockout news — or non-news — and skate around to where hockey is actually being played.

Attendance is apparently booming in the KHL with the arrival of so many locked out NHL players. And as the impasse continues, another wave of players signing contracts with European clubs seems possible.

One of the most intriguing KHL signings was by Alex Ovechkin’s Dynamo Moscow on Monday:  Ovie’s center on the Washington Capitals, Nicklas Backstrom. In fact, it was Ovechkin who recruited Backstrom by phoning him regularly to urge him to sign with Dynamo.

Here’s a photo of Ovie and Backie at the Dynamo offices from Allhockey.ru with Backstrom dressed in a Dynamo shirt.

Their old chemistry paid off immediately on Monday against Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, won 3-0 by Dynamo, with Backstrom setting up Ovechkin for a power play goal.

That contest matched the top two teams in the KHL’s Western Conference. Dynamo led the Bobrov Division by two points over Ilya Kovalchuk’s SKA St. Petersburg club coming into this game while the rebuilt Loko sat atop the Tarasov Division, three points ahead of CSKA (the Red Army club, with Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Radulov and Ilya Bryzgalov).

Backstrom caused something of a stir when he chose to wear 99 as his jersey number, which hockey fans always associate with Wayne Gretzky. Unlike the NHL, the KHL has not retired that number and, as Backstrom told Sovietsky Sport, he selected it “Because I had a 9 in my 19 and 19 was taken and then I didn’t like the other numbers so 99 was the only one.”

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Wake us up when this nightmare is over: a sentiment shared by more than a few hockey fans during the lockout. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

By Stu Hackel

The NHL cancelled another swath of games on Friday, through Nov. 1. Do you care? Have your eyes just glassed over, your ears become so full of this stuff that the words — well-meaning as they may be — and numbers just bounce right out?

At a certain point in this process of the NHL arriving at a new collective bargaining agreement, a big chunk of fans have just thrown up their hands and said, “I’ve had enough.” The claims and counterclaims, the blizzard of statistics and dollar figures, the same arguments over and over again, the threats and the responses, and the perceived lack of progress all becomes too much. And this week, just when it appeared that there might be some hope of a settlement, the floor dropped out beneath us again and now there is news of more games being axed. No one can be blamed for wanting to get off this roller coaster and let it ride on without them.

And yet…and yet…perhaps there is some light amidst the darkness.

When the owners this week proposed a new deal that, for the first time, said they’d accept a 50-50 split of Hockey Related Revenue, the players agreed on the target. However, they used some other formulas to reach it. Different versions of 50-50? Sounds crazy. Well, no one has ever — ever — said that NHL economics are sane. Still, never in all these months of haggling had the sides reached some sort of rough agreement on the portions each would receive. Now they merely (merely!) need to agree on a formula.

“Good luck with that, guys,” you say, waiving your hand in farewell. “Call me when you’ve got that figured out.”

It could be soon; it could be a long time.

This is the world of collective bargaining, which is certainly not a spectator sport, even if this negotiation is all about spectator sports. The stars of the CBA process don’t really care if you watch them or not; in fact, they probably prefer you don’t. Most of what they do is away from the cameras. But the more you see and the more you pay attention, the more you understand the truth in the famous quote that’s often wrongly attributed to Otto von Bismarck: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” The quote and the source may be apocryphal, the sentiment is not. Making the law for NHL labor relations is ugly business, a horror show with blood, bone, muscle and fat strewn and splattered about. It’s not for everyone.

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Described by one witness as “seething”, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman expressed disappointment that no progress had been made and that he could not see what the next step would be. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The optimism that some people felt when the NHL handed a new offer to the players on Tuesday quickly faded Thursday after the league rejected the NHLPA’s counter-offers that union members said were based on what had been presented to them. The players had three approaches that would all get to the 50-50 split in Hockey Related Revenue that the owners want, except that the split would not be realized in the first year of a new deal, only after a few seasons. The owners continue to want that division immediately.

As a result, talks — which only lasted about an hour today — have stalled once again and, barring some sort of reversal by one of the parties very soon, the league’s hope that a full season can be played now seems gone.

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The players have been warned that the NHL’s latest offer contains some serious shortcomings. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

By Stu Hackel

UPDATE: Thursday’s collective bargaining session in Toronto has ended with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman expressing disappointment at the lack of progress. The NHLPA reportedly offered three alternate proposals, none of which were deemed acceptable. A new post on today’s talks will be up a bit later this afternoon.

The first response from the NHLPA to Tuesday’s new offer by the NHL has been made public and anyone who believed that what the league has proposed — which you can read here — would lead directly to riotous cheers from the players and a quick deal is bound to be disappointed.

After a meeting by the union’s negotiating committee during which the proposal’s details were evaluated, NHLPA executive director Don Fehr sent a letter to membership and agents outlining the problems. Bob McKenzie of TSN got a copy and you can read it here.

The two sides will reconvene talks on Thursday afternoon in Toronto. A number of observers are calling this a critical make-it-or-break-it session which may determine whether we have a season or not, but that may be an overstatement, unless what is meant is a full 82 game season. A shortened season remains a possibility. No one on the owners’ side has said what is on the table is a final offer and, in fact, some have reported the NHLPA will make a counter proposal today.

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