NEW YORK - Just how pissed are NHL owners with the latest breakdown in CBA negotiations?
As with any labour process, it’s impossible to determine how deep you can slice through the rhetoric and grandstanding, a sideshow that has made this excruciating process even more annoying. But let’s start with Toronto Maple Leafs minority owner Larry Tanenbaum, an executive long known to be player-friendly and one of the group of six owners involved with head-to-head talks with players earlier this week in Manhattan.
In a carefully measured yet powerfully frank statement released by the team and the league Thursday night within hours of the blowup of negotiations, Tanenbaum sounded wounded and, by tone anyway, as if he was taking the breakdown personally.
