Report: NHL talks to resume Friday

• Tweet

TORONTO, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- The NHL and locked-out players will soon resume collective bargaining negotiations, The (Toronto) Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.

It was decided a full-scale negotiating session -- the first in 16 days -- will be held Friday after NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and NHL Players Association special counsel Steve Fehr met in Toronto, newspaper said.

A players union source said "non-core economic issues," rather than allocation of hockey-related revenues, would be the subject of the bargaining session, which could be held either in New York or Toronto.

The non-core issues could involve less controversial items such as minimum salary, grievances, increasing benefits for retired players, medical and travel costs, and promoting the game internationally, the newspaper said.

Daly said this week the league is "100 percent focused on not missing any regular-season games and hopefully we can achieve that objective. Obviously, we've got to talk before you can get a deal, so I think it's important to get the talks going again."

He said the onus was on the players to budge from their initial proposal, which included no absolute decrease in the percentage of league revenues they're currently receiving.