the thing about every one of these negotiations is that we all know there is are area that both sides will be happy with. as time and investment into the negotiations goes on, both sides feel they have already sacrificed and as a result deserve more, so the overlap in acceptable deals gets smaller and smaller.

The threat of decertifications is really a classic "this is my ball, and i am taking it and going home", but a lock out is the exact same move on the other side. Once both sides have laid their cards out, and have shown that they will not fold, the hope is that both sides are willing to go back and find that deal that makes them all feel like they got something.

This entire process is marred by a bad deal the last time around: the NHL wanted a cap very badly, and sacrificed a lot in the raw numbers to get it. The players were sitting on a 57% share of revinue- most other leagues are much closer to a 50/50 split, and most of the other leagues have a much higher revinue (remember that the fixed costs are all fairly similar, and those things come out of the owners half). In the NHL with a smaller pie, and the teams getting a smaller part of a small pie, they simply could not make money. There are a few teams that did very will in this system, but most did not.

We get to these negotiations, and we now have a bigger pie, so it should not matter as much to cover expenses since they are still relativly fixed figures and the NHL overall still netted a profit off of the old deal. It did become apparent that some teams could not survive in this set up since thier fixed cost are above teh 43% they were receiving, so there was no way from them to turn a profit. Both sides came to the table to discuss solutions. The players wanted the rich teams to share their money with the poor teams. The league wants the players to just take a smaller portion. Both are solutions to the same problem. one has a few rich teams paying the bill, the other has the players paying the bill.

Decertification actully makes the leauges stance even sillier since there are no longer players at all, so there is no one to foot the bill. The reality is that the players are getting too big of a slice of the pie (50/50 is what every other league gets, since you are above it, give in and go to 50), but the league needs to expand profit sharing with other teams. in another 5-10 years they will be in this situation again, and if there is already revinue sharing owners will not complain about doing it more every time.

Both sides just have come to the point that neither wants to give up too much since they have already sacrificed. Personally i like the idea of a mediator or arbitrator in these cases since there clearly is an intent to be bound on both sides. they need each other to survive, it is just a matter of figureing out a way make both sides content (we are beyond a win win situation, we are down to nobody cries option)

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10 team Dyn
tavares rnh statsny
AO benn
kessel malkin
ryan purcell
green letang enstrom kulkov OEL ellis
lundy ward varly bernier lehrner
burmistrov hodgson michalek, ryan oreilly, turris okposo

16 team h2h
Spezza, Tavares
Vanek,doan
malkin, eberle
Doughty Letang, karlsson, weber
hall
green enstrom downie palmeiri kassain bogo
lundy price pavelec

weiters fielder kipnis wright hanley braun upton upton maybin victorino goldschmidt
kershaw, startsburg, greinke, bumgarner, price, neise, bret anderson
valverde, hanrahan, aceves, reed, guerra, storen