From this moment on, the 2004-2005 NHL season will be marked with an asterisk and caption that reads "Season Cancelled."
A last-minute effort to put together a framework for a new collective bargaining agreement proved to be too little, too late on Wednesday as commissioner Gary Bettman officially called off the remainder of the 2004-2005 season.
"When I stood before you in September, I said NHL teams would not play again until our economic problems had been solved," Bettman said.
"As I stand before you today, it is my sad duty to announce that because that solution has not yet been attained, it no longer is practical to conduct even an abbreviated season. Accordingly, I have no choice but to announce the formal cancellation of play for 2004-05."
Bettman painted a picture of a league full of promise - but hamstrung by the last collective bargaining agreement. There was no animosity, only regret. In the absence of an agreement, the league simply ran out of time to play even a shortened schedule, he said.
Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHL Players' Association, blamed the league, calling cancelling an entire season "unthinkable."
The union boss said the players had made all the moves and all the concessions. "Unfortunately we never had a real negotiating partner."
"Keep one thing perfectly clear," he added. "The players never asked for more money, they just asked for a marketplace to exist where they could negotiate with their clubs' owners for what their value was to their teams."
The NHL is planning for the 2005-06 season, and will pursue more labour talks but Bettman warned the league is going to have to look at a "completely different economic model and it is going to have to have linkage (between revenue and player salary costs)."
"The best deal that was on the table is now gone," he added.
Bettman had given the Players' Association until 11am et Wednesday to accept the league's final offer, which featured a $42.5-million US salary cap. The union's counter-offer called for a $49-million salary cap. A publicized letter-writing campaign outlining the $6.5 million gap between both sides broke down late Tuesday night, prompting the league to send memos to its 30 teams saying the season would be cancelled.
"We weren't as close as people were speculating...We were still very far apart," Bettman said, noting that $6.5 million multiplied by 30 teams is close to $200 million.
The only other letter that came on Wednesday morning was a press release from the NHLPA saying it had scheduled its own news conference for 4pm et/1pm pt in Toronto.
"It's too bad...but at least we have an answer," Vancouver Canucks captain Markus Naslund told TSN. "It's too bad for us players that we can't be out there to perform but there's a bigger picture, too."
Phoenix Coyotes managing partner Wayne Gretzky didn't think there was enough negotiating going on in the months leading up the the the cancellation. ''It just seemed that we didn't talk for months for whatever reason,'' Gretzky told TSN. ''I'm like everybody else, I didn't understand why there wasn't communication at the top levels on both sides.''
''What scares me now is . . . I don't feel they'll be a lot of negotiating between now and next September,'' Gretzky said. ''Hopefully I'm wrong.''
The loss of the NHL season also means that fans may have lost the chance to Gretzky behind the bench in Phoenix. When TSN's Gord Miller asked Gretzky if would have coached the Coyotes if the season had been saved, Gretzky responded ''Strong possibility.''
It's the first time a major professional league in North America has cancelled an entire season due to a work stoppage. A Stanley Cup champion has been crowned every year since 1893 with the exception of 1919, when the Finals were canceled after five games due to a flu epidemic.
"I think it's a fresh start," said a calm Goodenow. "I think everything is off the table and we begin anew because we're under new circumstances.
"The process will commence again but under a totally different environment, that is absolutely for sure."
That includes taking off the table the players' offer to slash 24 per cent of existing contracts.
Early Tuesday evening, Bettman made what he termed the NHL's "last effort" to resolve the lengthy labor dispute, raising the amount of the previous salary cap offer of $40 million in an attempt to reach a new CBA with the players.
In a letter to Goodenow, Bettman put forth a "take it or leave it" offer and requested a response prior to his news conference Wednesday afternoon. Goodenow responded with his own letter to Bettman in which he presented a deal that would institute a $49 million cap - $3 million lower than the union's previous offer - plus $2.2 million in benefits.
Goodenow's six-year proposal also called for a $25 million floor that each team could fall below twice during the term, a minimum player salary of $300,000, a scale of payroll taxes and a 55 percent player share of 2005 playoff revenue.
While Bettman's proposal called for a hard salary cap, Goodenow's plan allowed teams the opportunity to exceed the threshold by 10 percent - up to $53.9 million - twice during its duration, with a 150 percent tax as a penalty.
After months of haggling over the issue of a salary cap, both the NHL and union made unprecedented concessions late Monday night. The NHL removed the linkage of salaries to league revenues while presenting a proposal that included a $40 million cap to the union.
Doing something it vowed never to consider, the NHLPA in turn backed away from its hardline stance against a cap and made a counterproposal that featured a $52 million limit on team payrolls. The union's latest offering also included the 24 percent rollback on existing contracts it presented in December and more aggressive tax thresholds and tax rates on team payrolls.
Under Bettman's proposal, NHL teams would have to divide less than $45 million among 24 players and would not be able to exceed the threshold. By comparison, NBA teams have nearly $44 million to divide among 12-15 players and also enjoy exceptions which allow them to exceed the cap without penalty.
The commissioner took pains to say the differences between the league and NHL Players' Association executive director Bob Goodenow were not personal.
"Please stop fabricating this personality issue between Bob and me. It doesn't exist. We don't agree on a lot of things professionally but this isn't about Bob and this isn't about me. This is about the health of this game."
Bettman locked out NHL players at the start of the 1994-95 season, when the league's average salary was $572,000. It has more than tripled to $1.8 million.
The lockout reached its 154th day Wednesday. If an agreement was reached, Bettman said the league had in place a 28-game regular season followed by a playoff with 16 participants.
The work stoppage has been in effect since Sept. 15, when Bettman announced that the league would lock out its players following the expiration of the most recent agreement. He indicated that teams had lost $1.8 billion over the last 10 years, including $224 million in 2003-04. Bettman added that the owners needed "an enforceable, defined relationship between revenues and expenses," so that a team's ability to compete was not dependent upon its ability to pay.
Two-and-a-half months passed before the two sides agreed to meet in their first formal bargaining session since the lockout began. It was at that point that the players offered a 24-percent rollback in salaries as part of their proposal. Though Bettman said the union finally acknowledged the league's financial troubles, the offer was rejected by the league.
The two sides met again in January, this time in a much smaller setting without Bettman or Goodenow at the bargaining table. But after almost 10 hours of talks over two days, both sides continued to cite "philosophical differences."
On Jan. 27, the league put forth a framework for a proposal that included a team-by-team salary cap between $32-$42 million with no luxury tax and team payrolls linked to revenues at a rate of 54-percent. The NHLPA did not look favourably on the proposal.
With the deadline of the season being cancelled hanging over their heads, Bettman and Goodenow finally met again for two days in early February. Both sides reported no progress.
On Feb. 9, Bettman set a weekend deadline for getting a new deal in place or else the season would be cancelled, acknowledging for the first time that a formal announcement would take place rather than let the season fade away without recognition.
For those keeping count, 834 of the NHL's 1,230 games this season had already been wiped out by Wednesday.
"What we must do now is not about the present or the short-term needs of this season. Rather, it is about the future of our league and 30 teams," Bettman said.