The countdown is on...

...and it started yesterday afternoon, when Gary Bettman informed the NHLPA that if there were no meaningful discussions going on by the weekend, the season would be cancelled. This came on the heels of a new proposal by the NHL, one that was almost immediately rejected by the Players' Association (which I might as well refer to simply as "Bob Goodenow," since there is a lot of evidence that he speaks for a very small - but rich - minority of players).

The gist of the newest proposal is that the league would start out with a luxury tax-style system, modeled after a plan that came from the players. This new proposal would turn into a salary cap system if one of four triggers was met, with those triggers being:

• 55% of league revenue is paid out as player salaries
• three or more teams have payrolls above $42 M (USD)
• the average of three highest payrolls is 33% higher than the average of the three lowest
• average team compensation exceeds $36.5 M

You can read TSN's full outline of the NHL's latest proposal here.

Now, Bob might have been a little hasty in flat-out rejecting this. And by "might have been a little hasty," I mean "good Lord, what was he thinking?" They could easily have spent the next few days negotiating on the finer points of the triggers, instead of scrapping the proposal and starting again at ground level. Goodenow had trouble with the fact that three teams already have payrolls above $42 mil. Well geez, Bob, negotiate it higher! What kind of a lawyer are you? The reality is - and Gary Bettman laid this out for the union, too - that when they start negotiating again in September, the deals aren't going to look anywhere near this good. Plus, by that point all the players have lost a year's salary. When it takes another four months to get a deal, some of them are going to be in rough shape financially; maybe not the Jagrs or the Forsbergs, but definitely the Dagenaises and the Bouchards.

At any rate, the union's unwillingness to even look for a compromise on this latest deal is disheartening at best. But on the upside, they only have to pretend to care for a couple more days...