NHL Lockout: Zach Parise Calls NHL Owners’ 50-50 Proposal A Publicity Stunt

Zach Parise, who left the New Jersey Devils to sign one of the most lucrative free agent contracts in the history of the NHL, said that the current proposal from the NHL owners to the players calling for a 50-50 revenue split will not end the current NHL Lockout. In fact, he said much more than that.

Parise has been very vocal throughout this process, and on Wednesday in front of fans and media, Parise called the latest 50-50 proposal by the owners nothing more than a “publicity stunt.”

“Something is not right there,” Parise said. “It’s confusing. All these owners, maybe this was their plan the whole time, to sign all these guys to these big contracts knowing full well they’re not going to pay the value of them. To me, that doesn’t sound like good-faith negotiating, yet they keep preaching it.”

Parise feels as if the owners do not really want to negotiate a new deal. The fact that the owners dismissed a reported three proposals in a 10 minute time span probably did not help their cause.

“You have all these owners signing big deals minutes before the CBA expires and then going the next day, ‘We don’t want to pay these contracts,” Parise said. “Maybe that’s how they conduct business. That just doesn’t seem right. What if us players signed a deal and said, ‘You know what, I actually want 15 percent more?’”

This does not bode well for playing hockey this season. Both sides still have some time to broker a new deal and reach some sort of agreement, but with every proposal shot down without a legitimate counter-proposal, it seems to get more and more bleak that we will see NHL games in 2012-2013.

Tags: 50-50 Proposal, Minnesota Wild, New Jersey Devils, NHL Lockout, Zach Parise