It was six and a half hours of meeting through a mediator on Wednesday between the NHL and NHLPA with little to show for it.
The response of one player involved in the negotiations, who was asked if there was any progress made on Wednesday, pretty much summed it up.
"Not really," he said, on his way home from New Jersey last night.
He wasn't sticking around for the possibility of more meetings, which doesn't leave a lot of optimism about a deal in the immediate future.
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said there's currently no offer on the table, although it's quite possible that the league let the mediator know that their last offer was an option if the players were ready to accept.
All we know for sure from Daly's comments is that an entire day was spent together and the two sides were never even in the same room.
It's too bad, because the timing of a deal could have really worked in the favor of a couple players. It still could.
On Wednesday, the Hamburg Freezers announced that Jamie Benn had left the team for personal issues, with Stars beat writer Mike Heika suggesting that it could be as simple as he wants to be home for Christmas. Without a new CBA, he's expected to return to Germany in January.
Earlier this week, colleague Katie Strang reported that Michael Del Zotto returned to New York for treatment on a minor back injury.
With both players in North America, the timing of a CBA couldn't be better because as soon as the lockout is concluded, attention will immediately turn to them and a few others like P.K. Subban, Ryan O'Reilly and Dmitry Kulikov. Unlike many players who were part of the rush to sign before the expiration of the last CBA, they opted to wait. They remain restricted free agents who will have to get a new deal done in the short period of time between the conclusion of CBA talks and the start of a season.
To read what the impact of the new CBA might be on key RFAs like Jamie Benn and Michael Del Zotto, you must be an ESPN Insider.
- Senior NHL writer for ESPN The Magazine
- Wrote for Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Wrote for The Sporting News
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Craig Custance
Craig Custance joined ESPN in September 2011 as an NHL reporter for ESPN the Magazine, ESPN Insider and ESPN.com. A graduate of Michigan State University, he lived for nearly a decade in Georgia working for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution where he spent time covering the late Atlanta Thrashers. He was the only Thrashers beat writer to get the team to the playoffs.
From 2008-11 he was the national hockey writer for the Sporting News, writing regularly in print and online. A member of the PHWA, he's a proud voter for the major NHL awards and can occasionally defend his selections.
Like hockey, he left Atlanta to return north where he currently lives in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with his wife Cassie and their three kids.
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