I feel it will get better as long as the players are able to wait through further negotiations. If the union folds or starts it's own league, in the end that's obviously going to mean a worse deal in the NHL.
However, if the union doesn't do either of those 2 I think the offer will get better simply because the only way this is getting solved at this point is negotiations, and during negotiations both sides come towards each other and meet somewhere in the middle.
Impasse is not an option for the NHL right now and won't be unless the union does something stupid like taking back their cap offer...hopefully they won't do that. Outside of that, there is clearly no impasse right now and the only way an impasse is created is if the owners propose linkage again. At that point the owners would have an impasse but the problem is that offer would be considered by many to be bad faith bargaining. Going from a cap to linkage when the other side will not take linkage is pretty much going backwards in negotiations and it's hard to get an impasse when you do that.
Now I understand they could go back to their 32-42 million linkage deal that was proposed a couple of weeks ago and argue that the damage done to the league is so great that they can't survive without linkage. But that's probably as far back as the NHL can go while avoiding bad faith bargaining...The NLRB might buy it and uphold that deal, problem is that deal probably wouldn't be good enough for the NHL anyway. Any linkage means there is a floor and if the NHL is going to win an impasse that floor isn't going to be able to be much lower than 28-30 million considering what they have previously proposed. But obviously it would be hard to pay replacement players that much for as long as it would take the NLRB to decide and at the same time a bunch of teams would lose money anyway with that payroll. Winning an impasse with linkage could theoretically put more teams out of business than just negotiating a hard cap at $45 million, and in order to attempt for the impasse the league would be taking a huge risk because their case isn't great and if they lose they are on the hook for about $1.5 billion in player salaries that were lost from the lockout. The risk is much greater than the reward. So, I doubt the NHL even attempts an impasse.
So assuming there is no impasse attempted and hoping the union doesn't do something stupid like start their own league, the only way I see it getting solved is for the two sides to negotiate a deal. I don't think either side would take the chance of not starting the season on time, so over the summer I think they will negotiate a deal. And negotiating means a better deal for both sides than what the other side has on the table right now. The cap will end up around $45 million and there will be no salary floor, because at this point any salary floor the NHL has is going to put a couple teams out of business considering how far their revenues are going to fall.
