Escrow cash eases lockout pain
The cheques are in the mail.
Locked-out NHL players are expected to have the pain of missing their first full pay period offset Wednesday when they receive last season’s escrow payment, according to a spokesman for the NHL Players’ Association.
Players are due to be returned 7.98 per cent of what they earned last year, plus interest, on the same day they would have received their second paycheque of the 2012-13 season if there hadn’t been a work stoppage.
The escrow payments will amount to about $80,000 for every million dollars a player earned — before deductions. For example, New York Rangers forward Brad Richards will gross approximately $960,000 after being the league’s highest-paid player last season.
Under the terms of the expired collective bargaining agreement, NHL players had a portion of their salaries deducted throughout the season and placed into an escrow account.
Once the final accounting for a year was completed — which ensured the correct percentage of revenue was paid out in salaries — players were refunded accordingly.
These escrow cheques come at an important time, with the lockout set to eliminate another pay cycle. Players also missed a cheque on Oct. 15, but that would only have cov- ered four days of work. The paycheque they would have received Wednesday would have been for a full half-month period.
NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr met with a group of players in Minnesota on Monday night and acknowledged in an interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that some of his constituents are concerned about lost wages that are mounting.
The NHL’s labour talks have been on hold since Oct. 18, when the NHLPA countered a league offer with three proposals of its own. Each of those were quickly rejected.
Since then, a league-imposed deadline to play a full season has passed and the NHL cancelled all games through Nov. 30.