TORONTO — Sitting in a boardroom at the NHL Players' Association's sleek 12th-floor downtown office, a relaxed Donald Fehr doesn't seem like a man getting ready for a fight.
But the union's executive director also makes it clear his membership isn't prepared to be pushed around a third consecutive time with labour clouds and the possibility of another lockout already starting to form on the horizon.
"It's no secret the players made enormous concessions to the owners in the last two negotiations," Fehr said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press. "There's a general sense that it would be appropriate for the scales to move back in the other direction a bit. We will see."
While another potential work stoppage is at least two years away, the clock is ticking, with fans shuddering at the memory of the 2004-05 and 2012-13 lockouts.
The NHL shut down for an entire season the first time around before the players capitulated to the owners by agreeing on a new collective bargaining agreement accented by a hard salary cap and a 24 per cent rollback on salaries.
The two sides were at odds again seven years later, with the players eventually surrendering more ground from a 57 per cent share of hockey-related revenue to an even 50/50 split on a decade-long CBA in January 2013 to end a lockout that cut the schedule to 48 games.
Both sides retained the right to end the most recent agreement after eight seasons with the option of giving notice in September 2019, meaning the next potential labour disruption could come ahead of the 2020-21 campaign.
Then again, the owners and players could decide to let the current CBA run its course, with a potential work stoppage delayed until 2022-23.
"It's business cordial at the moment. It can get difficult if you get contested issues," Fehr said of the current relationship between the owners and the NHLPA. "You may detest your landlord, and he may detest you.
"But if the rental agreement works for both sides, nobody's going to seek to get out of it."
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