Players Greet Deal With Cool Reception

The agreement that ended the 103-day NHL lockout Wednesday was not received warmly by some players.

“There’s been a lot of damage in this process,” said a weary Ken Baumgartner, a union vice president and player rep at Toronto. “There are bridges to mend.”

However, Baumgartner wasn’t in a mood to start that mending.

“If we had been dealing with some more rational people, this may not have lasted 103 days,” he said. “From what we hear, there were 10 teams who wanted the season to go down. That’s not rational deal-making.”

Mark Recchi, player rep for the Philadelphia Flyers, said: “There are still a lot of upset players and everything is still up in the air. We have to settle the transition issues first before we vote: What happens to those who filed for arbitration and those who are available for free agency? When we get the transitions in place, and everybody knows where we stand, that’s when we’ll have a vote.”

Brett Hull of the St. Louis Blues, one of the league’s stars, said he is troubled by elements of the settlement.

“I don’t like a few of the issues,” he said. “Well, I shouldn’t say a few - I don’t like the one main issue. But other than that, we’re going to go and look at everything and make sure every single guy has a real good grasp of what each issue is and how it’s going to affect them and future players.”

Hull’s teammate, Brendan Shanahan, sounded conciliatory about the free-agency issue.

“They bent a little bit,” he said. “We bent more. That’s something now that we want to get past. We think it’s the best deal we’ll get.”

Free agency was also on the mind of Boston’s Cam Neely.

“It’s pretty evident that the ownership basically wants to control you from the time you’re 18 to the time you’re 32,” he said. “God love the players who can play that long.”