Is it over?

The NHL lockout may be very close to over, with reports that the NHLPA caved and agreed to a salary cap:

And a later Internet report, quoting anonymous sources, said the league and the union had agreed to a floating cap based on the percentage of team revenues — with a floor of US$22-million to US$24-million to a ceiling between US$34-million and US$36-million in 2005-06.

The agreement reportedly includes a dollar-for-dollar luxury tax that would kick in at the midway point between the salary floor and the salary cap.

The resulting luxury tax dollars would be redistributed among lower-revenue teams.

The Inquirer had earlier pegged the high end of the cap somewhere between US$38-million and US$43-million.

Any deal would appear to include a 24% rollback of salaries, first offered by the union in December, and a league counter proposal that capped player compensation at 54% of total NHL revenues.

If the numbers are accurate, the union will be accepting a deal much lower than the last major proposal before the NHL season was cancelled in February. At the time, the league was offering a cap of up to US$42.5-million. The union, which had entered the lockout insisting it would never accept an artificial limit on salary levels, had agreed to the notion of a cap but reportedly would not go below US$49-million.

After a season of lost salaries, however, the players have moved closer and closer to the league’s numbers.

There’s no doubt that this is an owner’s victory, something that’s not altogether surprising considering how many players had at one time or another broken with their union to press for a deal.

Early analysis of the figures suggest that the deal will help to equalize rich and poor teams, fostering competitiveness. What suffers as a result, of course, is the motivation to develop a roster of young future stars, because the minute they get good enough, the team will be forced to trade some of them away for lower-priced players. That’s why I long maintained that an individual salary cap would have made more sense than a team cap, though negotiations were never heading in that direction.

While everyone’s being cautious, if the reports of the resolving of the biggest stumbling block are true, then this ought to pave the way for a deal and for the return of hockey next season, though major television and sponsorship deals have already been cancelled. Which really leads me to ask: why couldn’t this have been agreed to a year ago?

At any rate, here’s hoping that hockey will be back soon.