League Will Release Report Outlining Financial Losses

A financial analysis to be released today by the NHL will support its claims teams lost $300 million last season and that its financial well-being depends on reining in player costs in the next collective bargaining agreement with the players’ association.

The league retained Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a year ago to examine its finances. He will release his report at a news conference in New York.

His work was described as an “independent study,” but he was retained by the league, apparently without the knowledge of the NHLPA. A spokesman for the players’ association said it would have no comment until the report was made public.

The NHL is seeking what it calls “cost certainty” in a new labor deal. The NHLPA has said owners have proposed only an NFL-style hard salary cap, which it won’t accept.

The NHLPA has disputed the NHL’s calculations of its finances. Each team submits to the league a Unified Report of Operations, which is supposed to account for all its hockey-related revenues. However, the NHLPA contends teams understate revenues by directing them to related business entities, creating a falsely bleak picture for the team and, by extension, for the NHL. Today’s report is expected to back the league’s accounting.

The league and the NHLPA haven’t had formal talks since Oct. 1. Rhetoric has escalated as the days pass before the Sept. 15 expiration of the current agreement.

“The union does not want to have a discussion about what is the fair share the players as a group are entitled to,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said Saturday. “That’s a pretty fundamental issue....

“We know the magnitude of our losses. We know that the situation has to be fixed and we want to do it.”

Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHLPA, responded by saying the union had examined the financial reports of four teams -- including the Kings -- and determined they had understated revenues by $52 million. Therefore, teams are doing better than they claim and there’s no need to impose a cap.

“We’re looking for a marketplace system,” he said. “The reality of the numbers is that owners pay players what they can afford.... The competitive balance of hockey races has never been better.”

Meanwhile, general managers ended meetings in Henderson, Nev., with an emotional defense by Colin Campbell, the NHL’s director of hockey operations, of suggested rule changes designed to stimulate offense.

Goalies have objected to a proposal that would reduce the width of their leg pads from 12 inches to 10, as well as to a rule that would prohibit them from handling the puck behind the goal line.

“Seeing a goalie handling the puck, that’s pretty exciting,” Campbell said in a tone described as sarcastic by those who heard him. “I thought it was pretty exciting seeing Mike Gartner and Guy Lafleur going down the wing and scoring. Now we have to go down and shove it through the side of their pads or jam it in at the side of the net.”

Campbell disparaged a complaint from Toronto goalie Trevor Kidd, who had showed reporters kids’ pads wider than 10 inches.

“Trevor Kidd can say that, but if I were him I’d work on my game,” Campbell said. “We work hard. We don’t just grab things from our back pocket and say, ‘Let’s try this.’ ”

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Ottawa’s Radek Bonk will be sidelined up to six weeks with a broken right foot.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.