Report: NHLPA Exploring Legal Options if NHL Season is Lost

The NHL and the NHLPA continue to battle it out over dollars and cents and the conversation doesn't appear to be going very well. NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman refuses to think the NHL is 'negotiating' anything, meanwhile the NHLPA is wondering why the owners signed off on the current agreement in July, if they were just going to turn around and ask to change multiple pieces.

Rick Westhead of TSN reports the NHLPA is looking into their legal options and their Lawyers have been busy laying the ground work. Both the NHL and the PA have a variety of leverage due to agreements in place, along with previous practice but it could certainly get messy.

The report from Westhead included:

Jodi Balsam, a former NFL lawyer who now teaches sports law at Brooklyn Law School in New York, said NHL players would seem to have a strong legal case to pursue if the league cancels the season.

“They signed this CBA in July 2020 and that was hardly a promising month,” Balsam said. “The pandemic had subsided, but every source of medical and scientific knowledge was predicting a resurgence in the fall. And if the NHL failed to prepare for that in the latest CBA then that’s on them. The big question is whether the NHL players stay unified and insist the NHL follow through with the deal they bargained for.”

Players are set to receive 72 per cent of their salaries during the 2020-21 season. Twenty per cent of player salaries are being given back to owners to repay their revenue shortfall from 2019-20’s paused season. A further 10 per cent is to be deferred and paid out over three seasons.

Pretty crazy that it's come to this for the NHL and the PA. The decisions made over the course of the next few weeks are going to have impacts felt for decades.

2020 continues to bring the noise.