NHL players ponder next labor move

By Ben Klayman

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - National Hockey League players have the option to reopen the current labor deal with owners a year early, but likely will not make a final decision until the middle of next season, the players' union chief said on Friday.

Three years since NHL teams imposed a salary cap after a bitter labor dispute wiped out the entire 2004-2005 season, the National Hockey League Players Association is weighing the merits and challenges of reopening the deal at the end of next season, NHLPA Executive Director Paul Kelly told Reuters.

"We're just beginning to have that dialogue with the players," he said at the Sports Lawyers Association's annual conference in San Francisco. "I don't think anyone has a tremendous appetite for serious labor negotiations unless there's a good, solid business reason for it."

While acknowledging the union would love to kill the salary cap, he warned that reopening the deal would also give owners a crack at renegotiating parts of the contract they do not like.

"The players need to understand ... be careful what you wish for; that you could be finding yourself embroiled in a much longer and more difficult discussion," he said.

The union also has the option of extending the deal a year through the 2011-2012 season, Kelly said. The owners do not have similar options.

Kelly said the union will hold player meetings in Colorado Springs, Colorado, next month and in Rome in July to begin talks on contract issues. Those talks will continue during fall tours with each team and by the middle of next season the union will have established its views to make a final decision.

In the meantime, the union also wants NHL revenue to grow so the players receive more money, and that means continuing to broaden the fan base with more games overseas, and possibly teams in Western Europe down the road, Kelly said.

The NHL began the current season with two games in London between teams from Los Angeles and nearby Anaheim, and it plans to expand that program next season.

The New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning will play two games in Prague and the Ottawa Senators and Pittsburgh Penguins play in Stockholm, he said. The teams also will play exhibition games in other countries, including Germany and Switzerland.

Assuming that is successful, Kelly foresees the NHL sending eight to 12 teams to Europe the following year as the league gauges whether that region can support its own division. He added, however, any such move is several years away as the NHL first focuses on strengthening its financially weaker teams.

"We will get there," Kelly said. "Globalization of sport is the wave of the future. Soccer is already showing that. Frankly, if we're not the next sport to globalize, then probably we've made a serious mistake."

Another high-profile game the league played last year was a heavily attended outdoor game between Pittsburgh and Buffalo in New York. Next season's game will be played either in New York's Yankee Stadium or Chicago's Wrigley Field, he said.

Yankee Stadium is the odds-on favorite because New York is the largest U.S. television market and a game there would be the last sporting event in the storied stadium before it is torn down to make way for a new ballpark, Kelly said.

"The hook for us is what will best resonate with the U.S. television audience," he said. "What will give us the broadest appeal to create the kind of buzz for our game that we're looking to create."

If efforts to strengthen weaker markets fail, the NHL could eventually look to move teams to such markets as Quebec City, Winnipeg, Seattle, and Hamilton, Ontario, he said. Analysts say other possible new markets include Las Vegas and Kansas City.

(Editing by Braden Reddall)