The league is two levels under the NHL.
Barring a last minute agreement, there will be no hockey games on December 26th on the ECHL slate. The reason? The players will be on strike. The ECHL is a development league for some players and it also is a place where players can extend their careers for a year or two before getting on with the rest of their lives. It is two notches below the National Hockey League. The ECHL has 30 franchises in the United States and in Canada and there are loose affiliations between NHL teams and ECHL teams. There have been 776 ECHL players who played one or more games in the NHL. The ECHL has been in existence since 1988. The original name was the East Coast Hockey League and it started with five teams. The ECHL has had many teams come and go in its history. The league offers low salaries, lots of long bus trips and does not allocate much in the way of meal money. The players know that when they sign up for work.
The players want more money and the owners don’t want to part with too much in terms of salaries and per diem meal stipends. “Our members have made it very clear that they’ve had enough,” said Professional Hockey Players’ Association Executive Director Brian Ramsay. “Unfortunately, this is a league that would rather bully us than bargain.” The ECHL offered to raise the salary cap to 16.4% this season, with retroactive pay upon ratification, and increases in total player salaries in future years to pay players nearly 27% more than the current cap. The league said it has also offered larger per diems, mandatory day-off requirements and a 325-mile limit for travel between back-to-back games. The ECHL labor dispute is all about money.
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