Daily Cupcakes - Links from around the locked out NHL - October 17th, 2012

Henrik Lundqvist will wait a little longer before heading overseas.

But the Swedish Elite League team's most famous graduate, Henrik Lundqvist, says he will wait before committing,

"The situation with NHL lockout is so uncertain so far, so we have decided to wait and see how it all unfolds," the New York Rangers goalie said, according to a translation of an article on the team's website.

An interview with Ryan Stoa.

"Being the visiting team, you come in and there's a hostile crowd," Stoa said Tuesday. "The Hershey Bears are usually the best in the league. You've got to up your intensity, you've got to up pretty much everything.

"It's definitely a fun place to play, and I'm excited for the [home portion of the] regular season to start and see what it's like to play on this team rather than against them."

A good look into the NHL's new deal.

Well, that moment has arrived, more or less. When the NHL put forward a surprise proposal on Tuesday in Toronto, it was no Magna Carta of fairness. Just saying 50-50 doesn’t mean fair if you started at 57-43 and have utterly refused to justify your demand for concessions from the players in a business with US$3.3-billion in total revenues.

But fairness is relative, and therefore the choice. This offer at least appears to be good faith from the league, which since both sides were sitting on their hands and waiting for somebody else to blink, is progress. As reported, it begins with a 50-50 split of revenue — which some believe is what the league was aiming for all along — and includes a restitution of money lost next season over the course of long-terms contracts (a key sticking point for the union, which pointed to the lack of immediate clawbacks after the NBA and NFL lockouts).

Don't be too optimistic.

As one agent added, the devil’s in the details. And aside from the 50-50 split of hockey-related revenues and some other elements — a four-year entry-level system, an eight-year wait to become a free agent — there are a lot of details that we still do not know about in this latest proposal.

"When I’m negotiating for my individual clients, you could be getting close but maybe that last 10% of the deal is the most critical to getting it done properly," said the agent. "So you never come back to the player with optimism that a deal is going to get done."

In other words, hope for the best and plan for the worst.