Surprises in the new NHL CBA deal

Sci fi nerds had always known that good things would
happen if Gollum ever teamed up with Han Salo.

The NHL and NHLPA finally reached an agreement over the weekend, and the resulting new CBA doesn't sound like it will contain anything unexpected. In fact, it's pretty much the deal everyone had been predicting for months.

Or maybe not. DGB spies got their hands on the entire top secret document, and it turns out that it actually contains a few surprises. Here are some of the more interesting details that haven't made their way into public reports yet.

• There's a strict confidentiality clause in which both sides agree to never publicly acknowledge that nobody ever actually understood what "make whole" was supposed to mean.
  
  
• The deal sets aside a significant sum of money to donate to charitable organizations helping those most desperately in need of urgent assistance: reporters who are slightly tired and cold.
  
  
• The two sides agree to pay for all travel expenses when federal mediator Scot Beckenbaugh eventually returns to fight crime on his home planet.
  
  
• In a message aimed at all the league and team employees who took pay cuts or were laid off entirely, the document includes a photo of Jeremy Jacobs shrugging his shoulders while sitting on a giant pile of money.
  
  
• For reasons nobody seems to be clear on, half the document is made up of knitting patterns for Steve Fehr's sweater collection.
  
  
• An improved pension plan will make more funds available to the players who retire early due to all those critical safety issues that didn't end up being addressed in the deal at all.
  
  
• The two sides will split the cost of a tasteful memorial plaque and reflecting pool to be located at the top of the contract length hill that Bill Daly died on.
  
  
• One page of the document includes a note in what appears to be Gary Bettman's hand-writing that reads "I have discovered a truly marvelous way to ensure the viability of the Phoenix Coyotes, which this margin is too narrow to contain."
  
  
• Since the two sides have historically been unable to agree on who should control the purse strings, from now on they've decided to just make Mike Fisher hold them.
  
  
• The agreement will see a special fund created to support the efforts of countries that have struggled to maintain a successful junior development program, like Canada.
  
  
• The players agree to help the owners defer the cost of jet fuel, specifically on that cargo plane that's spent the last few months circling over Toronto carrying a terrified Roberto Luongo with a parachute strapped to his back.
  
  
• Bettman promises to never again talk about how much massages cost because it was just creeping everybody out.
  
  
• At the end of each season, the billions of dollars of hockey-related revenue won't be considered final until the total amount has been thoroughly audited, signed off by forensic accountants, and had its picture taken with Evander Kane.
  
  
• Both sides agree that referring to the amnesty buyout clause as "The Scott Gomez Rule" would be tacky and predictable; will instead refer to it as "The Scott Gomez Regulation".
  
  
• Everyone agrees to write some sort of thank you note to that intern who was going to file the disclaimer of interest paperwork to dissolve the union on Tuesday morning, now that he's been told he won't need to and … wait, someone did tell him not to file that, right? Oh. Oh man.
  
  
• The last page includes a preliminary agreement about which mind-numbingly trivial issues the two sides will argue incessantly about when we do this all again in eight years.
  

---

Featuring 70 posts including 24 chapters of exclusive new material, The Best of Down Goes Brown is now available

.

Buy it today: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Nook | Chapters/Indigo | Kobo | iBooks