The National Hockey League's collective bargaining agreement with its players association is a complicated document, featuring 31 articles and 18 exhibits.

Patricia McDonnell, Associated Press Like many of the NHL's brightest stars, Boston's Joe Thornton, left, will head overseas to play this season if the game's economic shut down the league this fall. Click photo for larger image. KEY DATES Wednesday: Next scheduled negotiations between players and owners. Sept. 15: Collective bargaining agreement expires. Sept. 16: Training camps scheduled to open. Oct. 13: Scheduled start of 2004-05 season. Already ailing city coffers would feel pangs of stoppage

They cover everything from per diem payments to waiver draft eligibility, from legal forms for disability releases to minimum standards for earning performance bonuses.

And while pretty much all of them are up for discussion this summer, only one issue really matters.

Only one likely will be responsible for the 2004-05 NHL season being abbreviated or lost.

It's only one issue -- devising a financial structure that will satisfy labor and management -- but includes so many complex facets that it could sabotage an entire winter of hockey.

To date, the sides have agreed on precious little, except perhaps that the other has staked out a hopelessly misguided, unrealistic position.

Owners insist players show little real interest in budging much from the status quo, which management contends resulted in league-wide losses of $273 million for the 2002-03 season. Players believe the owners have expressed no desire to compromise and are bent on having a salary cap as the centerpiece of any agreement crafted to replace the one that will expire Sept. 15.

The only encouraging aspect of the negotiations so far might be that the league and the players share the perspective that, if they somehow concoct a salary structure that satisfies everyone, there's little danger of the talks being derailed by a secondary matter.

"I really don't anticipate there being other major issues," said NHL executive vice president Bill Daly.

"All the focus has been on the threshold issue," said Ted Saskin, senior director of the NHLPA. "And one would hope that, once that's resolved, the other items could fall into place."

Not enough drag

The current collective bargaining agreement is the byproduct of a labor dispute that shaved the 1994-95 NHL season from 84 games to 48.

Its core elements -- things such as a salary cap for entry-level players, systems for restricted and unrestricted free agency and salary arbitration -- were designed to create a drag on salaries.

In the 10 years since, revenues have increased 173 percent, according to figures compiled by the league, but salaries have gone up 261 percent.

"From the ownership perspective, we thought the deal was going to work," Daly said. "And work a lot better than it ended up working."

A case could be made that the players' association has managed the agreement better than the league, that it has shrewdly used the tools that agreement provided -- things such as qualifying offers and salary arbitration and free agency -- to steadily upgrade its members' earnings.

Saskin rejects such thinking. "I don't think one side's done better than the other." He attributes the steady rise in salaries for most of the past decade to the operation of the marketplace, something that benefits both sides at one point or another.

"In the last year or two, we've seen a strong moderation in player costs, and that's part of the ebb and flow of any agreement, so I don't think anyone is 'winning,' one way or the other, over the agreement."

The players do not flatly reject the notion that the league has some financial problems, and they submitted a proposal last fall that Saskin said was designed to address those problems.

"The core elements were [designed] to respond to what they said were their principal concerns."

The players' package included a luxury tax system, a 5 percent across-the-board reduction in salaries, enhanced revenue sharing and cutbacks on entry-level salaries. The offer barely caused a ripple, presumably because the league viewed it as a Band-Aid approach for a problem requiring major surgery.

The need for "cost-certainty" has become the NHL's mantra in recent years, and it's clear management's goal is to get a system that forges a link between income and expenditures.

"What we've said consistently is that what we're looking for is kind of a partnership," Daly said. "There has to be some relationship between revenues and expenses. That's what we're most concerned about."

League officials say $1.494 billion of its $1.996 billion in revenues for the 2002-03 season went toward player costs, up from 57 percent in 1993-94. Consequently, total operating costs in 2002-03 were 114 percent of revenues, which resulted in 19 franchises losing an average of $18 million, league officials said. The other 11 earned an average profit of $6.4 million.

The players association interprets the NHL's desire to tie salaries to revenues as a poorly veiled attempt for a salary cap and portrays that as the consummate deal-breaker. Whether the cap would be a hard one that sets a maximum for each team's payroll or a soft one, such as the one used in the NBA, doesn't matter.

"There's no cap that would form something that would be acceptable to us," Saskin said. "What I think you have to look at is, what are the reasons, what are their concerns, what is it they're trying to address, and how can that be achieved in ways that still allow a marketplace to operate?

"I think there are probably hundreds of ways you can do that without resorting to a cap-type system. Unfortunately, to date, they've been fixated on a cap system as the only [solution] they're prepared to talk about. Certainly, it's fair to say we don't see a cap as necessary or appropriate in any way, shape, manner or form."

Peter Diana, Post-Gazette The point of players taking their games elsewhere was driven home for the Penguins this week when Aleksey Morozov, fearing a long stoppage, signed to play in Russia. Click photo for larger image.

Across the pond

This spring, the players association had a meeting for its members in Toronto to keep them informed on the status of negotiations and well-versed on the issues.

"They were trying to make us understand everything that's going on, and it's a lot to take in," Penguins forward Rico Fata said. "It's actually kind of hard to comprehend. Most of us, we're just concerned about playing hockey."

And a lot of players are looking into the possibility of doing it outside of North America. Boston center Joe Thornton probably is the most prominent player to strike a deal to play in Europe -- he'll join Davos in Switzerland if NHL players are locked out -- but he's just one name on a list that gets longer by the day. And the NHLPA anticipates to have a growth spurt next month.

"Once Sept. 15 passes, I think a lot more players are going to be looking at Europe and other places as options for them to stay in shape and do what they love to do -- play hockey," Saskin said.

"We've been telling players for quite some time that the league plans to trigger a lockout to try to put financial and emotional pressure on players, and players should make alternate plans for the next few years, so they're able to not be caught by surprise here. And they certainly won't be."

Two-sided solidarity

Regardless of how the current agreement has contributed to the league's financial woes, many of its problems have been self-inflicted.

Deep-pockets teams such as the New York Rangers, Detroit, and Philadelphia have spent liberally in an effort to assemble championship teams, driving up salaries across the league.

"Clearly, some clubs acted in their own individual self-interest at certain points in the agreement," Daly said.

Salary arbitration established benchmark salaries for a particular style or caliber of player, as did exorbitant contracts some clubs used to lure free agents.

"A decision that might make sense for one club might not make sense for another," Daly said. "The way the current system operates, the other 29 clubs have had to live with [the repercussions of moves made by another].

"If a club makes a bad decision, and if the only club penalized by that decision is the club that made it, I'm OK with that. If it penalizes all 30, it becomes problematic."

Although the nature of any league is that member clubs -- and the players on them -- must compete, presenting a united front is critical for both sides in a labor dispute. If either's solidarity begins to erode -- whether it's because players miss their paychecks or owners miss their ticket revenues -- its bargaining position can be seriously weakened.

To date that has been a nonfactor.

"At this point, I've never seen an ownership more unified that this one," Daly said. "The problems are so significant, and so apparent, that there is not a single voice of dissent. Dissension is not something we've even thought about encountering."

Saskin feels the same is true of his membership.

"I've never worried about the solidarity of the players," he said. "The players are very well-informed on all the issues, as they were in '94 and probably are even more so today, given the additional years of preparation and time."

Damage control

The NHL expanded to its current 30 teams when it added Columbus and Minnesota in 2000.

And, to hear everyone involved in the contract negotiations tell it, the number of teams will not change, regardless of how long it takes to get a new deal in place.

Several years ago the league had each club turn over $10 million to cover expenses that might arise during an extended lockout. That means no team, no matter how perilous its finances, should be in mortal peril anytime soon.

"I don't think we're in danger of losing any franchises," Daly said. "They are all are eminently prepared for the worst. We're far more at risk of losing franchises if we'd continue to operate under the [current] system."

"I take at face value what [NHL commissioner] Gary Bettman's been telling us, and that's that all of his teams are in a financial position that their existence is not at all threatened by what he plans to do," Saskin said. "He's in a better position to judge that. They've put together their $300 million lockout fund and I assume that is not an issue, because he said it won't be an issue."

What isn't so clear is how much the image -- and popularity -- of the NHL will suffer if it drops off the sporting public's radar for a few months. Or years.

National TV audiences in this country are tiny and, while the sport's survival probably won't be an issue in the cold-weather areas where it has been established for decades, there are real questions about how its following in Sun Belt cities will suffer.

And whether the damage can be undone.

"I certainly worry about the impact on the game, because I think a lockout is a terribly destructive thing," Saskin said. "It alienates your fans and it's bad for a whole host of reasons."

Daly doesn't argue, but suggested that it would be even more destructive to negotiate an agreement that fails to address fiscal issues NHL officials and team management insist threaten the future of the league.

"Everybody understands that a work stoppage is not desirable," he said. "[But] we're very certain that the long-term damage to the sport would be done much more by doing a deal just to do a deal than it would be by doing the right deal."