| The new NHL season will not start National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman yesterday officially announced the final cancellation of the never-started season. Before the deadline set by Bettman for signing a new labor agreement between the NHL and the players' union (NHL PA), the parties did not reach a compromise. There won't be any major hockey in North America until at least October.
Ice hockey became the first popular team sport in North America, where the main professional league lost an entire season due to financial discrepancies between players and employers. The Stanley Cup will not be played for the first time since 1919, when the decisive playoff matches were canceled due to the flu epidemic.
Until recently, there were minimal chances of saving the championship. The club owners, represented by Bettman, and the players, represented by union leader Bob Goodenow, have been moving slowly towards each other lately. It seemed that there was a real possibility that the lockout that began on September 15 would be lifted. A draft calendar was even prepared in several versions - for 28, 30 and 32 games for each club.
And yet the parties took irreconcilable positions. The hockey players agreed to the introduction of a hard ceiling on annual salaries for each team, but the stumbling block was its amount. The league insisted on a figure of 42.5 million dollars, the players were ready to agree to a minimum of 49 million.
“I must fulfill the sad duty of announcing the impossibility of holding the NHL championship, even in a truncated form,” Bettman said yesterday. - I hope the next season will still take place. “We deeply regret that we deprived hockey fans of a holiday, and that staff members of the league and NHL clubs were temporarily left without work.”
In Russia and a number of other European countries, the news of the cancellation of the season in North America was greeted with relief. Now our clubs have seven dozen players under contracts with overseas teams. Among them are world-class stars - Ilya Kovalchuk, Czech Jaromir Jagr, Canadians Vincent Lecavalier, Dany Heatley and others. Sergei Samsonov and Alexey Yashin are preparing to make their debut in the championship. If the lockout was lifted, they would have to return overseas, and the national championship would instantly lose its attractiveness. Vladimir ILYIN |
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