Thursday Chum Bucket: NHLPA strikes back ahead of meetings

The league and players’ association will continue negotiations today but you can read the entirety of Donald Fehr’s e-mail to all players and agents in response to the NHL’s most recent proposal. This pretty much sums up his position: “The proposal does represent movement from their last negotiating position, but still represents very large, immediate and continuing concessions by players to owners, in salary and benefits (the Players’ Share) and in individual player contracting rules.” [Sportsnet]
Escrow is the name of the game and the reason the players will not be simply accepting the NHL’s proposal today. [The Globe & Mail]
How a clause in the proposed CBA that forces teams to carry the cap hit of a retired player even after he’s been traded could completely screw the Philadelphia Flyers. [Broad Street Hockey]
Jonathan Toews thinks the league’s offer is “just a ploy to kind of swing the positive light back in their favor.” [Pro Hockey Talk]
Speaking of Toews, he’ll be featured prominently at the charity game the newest Shark Adam Burish is looking to hold in Chicago with much of the Blackhawks‘ 2010 championship squad. [ESPN Chicago]
The always insightful and incredibly intelligent Jeremy Roenick urges players to accept the league’s proposal. [CSN Bay Area]
Once the CBA is finalized, assuming that happens in any of our lifetimes, the NHL could add expansion franchises in Quebec City and the Greater Toronto Area. [SB Nation]
The Bulls lost 5-4 in a shootout last night to the Ontario Reign after surrendering three late goals. [SF Bulls]
Finally, if you have nothing better to do this morning, here’s a novel on what may have transpired if Bain Capital had taken over the NHL during the 2004 lockout as they offered to. The money (literally) quote: “The unsentimental analysts at Bain had exposed the uncomfortable fact about NHL lockouts, then and now: They’re proxy wars between big markets and small markets in which the owners try to wring money out of the players instead of one another.” [Deadspin]

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