NHL 48-game season starts Jan. 19 after players accept contract
1/14/2013The National Hockey League’s lockout-shortened season will begin on Jan. 19 with a total of 48 regular-season games per team after players gave final approval to a new contract.
The abbreviated schedule was announced by the league last night as its 700-player union ratified a 10-year collective bargaining agreement, ending a 117-day lockout.
After a one-week training camp, the world’s 30 top professional hockey teams will play an average of 3.5 games each week leading up to the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs on April 30.
A total of 13 games will be played on Jan. 19, including a meeting between the Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings and Chicago Blackhawks. In other games; the New Jersey Devils, who lost to Los Angeles in last season’s championship, will face the New York Islanders; Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins will face the Philadelphia Flyers; and the New York Rangers, with newly acquired right wing Rick Nash, will play the Boston Bruins.
The players approved the new 10-year agreement three days after the NHL’s Board of Governors voted in favor of the pact during a Jan. 9 meeting in New York.
50-50 Split
The agreement calls for the owners and players to split Hockey Related Revenues equally. It also includes terms that limit the length of individual player contracts to seven years or eight when a team is re-signing its own player and regulates the compensation structure, year-to-year variability and defining minimum value.
The CBA also features a new defined benefit pension plan for the players and enhanced revenue-sharing among the Clubs.
The world’s top professional hockey league and its players’ union agreed on the contract’s framework Jan. 6, ending the shutdown that began Sept. 16 and forced the cancellation of 625 games, or 51 percent of the original schedule with each team playing 82 games.
The lockout also forced the cancellation of this year’s outdoor Winter Classic game on New Year’s Day and the All-Star Game in Columbus, Ohio.
The NHL, which had $3.3 billion in revenue last season, gave up about $1 billion to get the 10-year deal that reduced the players’ share of the earnings to 50 percent, the New York Times reported without saying where it got the information.
Lockout History
The work stoppage was the second time in the last seven seasons that owners shut the league down following the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement.
The previous lockout resulted in the loss of the 2004-05 season, the only time a complete schedule of one of North America’s four major pro sports leagues was wiped out in a labor dispute. It also was the first year since 1919 that the Stanley Cup wasn’t awarded.
In the 1994-95 season, a lockout ended Jan. 11 and a 48- game schedule began on Jan. 20.
The newest dispute was focused on how players and owners would split revenue that grew 50 percent by last season from $2.2 billion in 2003-04. Under the previous agreement, players received 57 percent, or $1.9 billion, of league revenue.
The negotiations also involved length of player contracts and funding of the union’s pension plan.
The collective bargaining agreement runs through the 2021- 22 season, with both sides having the right to opt out after eight years, according to the provisions.
Salary Jump
Before the start of the 2011-12 season, the average NHL player salary was $2.4 million, up from about $1.5 million at the start of the 2005-06 season.
In comparison, National Basketball Association players made an average of $5.15 million, the highest among North America’s four major sports leagues, for 2011-12. The average salary for a National Football League player was $1.9 million, the lowest of the four leagues, with Major League Baseball’s $3.3 million average salary ranking second behind the NBA.