Lockout

The NFL strikes back. The league's owners received a favorable ruling Monday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit granted a permanent stay that, in essence, keeps the lockout in place until a full appeal is heard on June 3. Potentially more beneficial to the owners - and damaging to the players' cause - is language in the decision that questions U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson's April 25 decision to lift the lockout....

The NBA appears headed for a "suicidal" lockout, said Billy Hunter, executive director of the union that represents players. "The players can't understand why the owners would go to a lockout," Hunter told Bloomburg News last night. "It's suicidal. " The current collective-bargaining agreement expires on July 1. Deputy commissioner Russ Granik told members of the NBA's competition committee Monday to prepare for a lockout, four league sources told ESPN.com. Phil Jackson expects to decide in "another day or two" whether he will return to coaching the Los Angeles Lakers or some other NBA team next season.

Three thousand steel workers in Bucks County are entitled to unemployment benefits because the work stoppage at USX's Fairless Works is a lockout, not a strike, according to state officials. Yesterday's decision by James W. Knepper Jr., the secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and Industry, was good news for the members of United Steel Workers Local 4889. "We can stay out and have food on the table," said Local 4889 president Al Lupini. "I think U.S. Steel has no choice . . . but to open up the gates and keep negotiating.

Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock is supposed to be in the final year of his four-year contract when the National Hockey League returns this fall. However, according to club chairman Ed Snider, there is a provision in Hitchcock's contract stipulating that a year missed because of a work stoppage would "roll over" to the next year. Last season was wiped out by the lockout, so Hitchcock automatically gets another year added to his deal, extending him to 2006-07. Snider, however, wouldn't mind seeing Hitchcock tied up longer.

These are confusing times on baseball's labor front. On the one hand, players and owners are amassing enormous treasuries to cushion themselves through a work stoppage. Talk of a spring-training lockout is gathering steam. On the other hand, the lords of baseball now speak of "conciliation" and "partnerships" with the players. The ledger books have been opened to the union, and management has proposed a revolutionary revenue-sharing plan that borrows heavily from the National Basketball Association.

NEW YORK - With time running out on NHL labor talks, commissioner Gary Bettman cautioned Thursday that the league is prepared to lock out its players if a new collective bargaining agreement is not reached by Sept. 15, when the current deal expires. "Time is running short, and the owners are not prepared to operate under this collective bargaining agreement for another season, so we need to get to making a deal and doing it soon," Bettman said after the two sides met at the league headquarters.

Jari Kurri is going back to Finland, Peter Forsberg to Sweden. And, in the biggest surprise of all, Marty McSorley looks as if he's headed for Las Vegas. They are among several NHL players looking for work during the NHL's current lockout, which went into its 16th day yesterday as the number of postponed games reached 89. A spokesman for the Las Vegas Thunder confirmed yesterday that the International Hockey League team is "very, very close" to a deal with McSorley, the Los Angeles Kings' veteran forward-defenseman.

The workouts are almost as forced as the smiles these days for Keith Primeau. Coming off the most prolific postseason of his 14-year NHL career, the Flyers' captain continues to push himself to prepare for a season that might not occur. The NHL's collective-bargaining agreement expires Wednesday, which happens to be the day the Flyers are supposed to report to training camp. Talks between the league and the players' association broke off Thursday. There was no progress and even less hope.

After 15 days without any face-to-face negotiations, representatives from the NHL and the players' union met Saturday and talked late into the night. Bill Daly, the NHL's deputy commissioner, and Steve Fehr, special counsel for the NHLPA, met at a secret location and tried to find some common ground in the labor battle. There were rumblings that the league was going to absorb part of the players' loss from a drop in their share of hockey-related revenue. The players had 57 percent of the share in the last collective-bargaining agreement and the owners want a 50-50 split in the new deal.

If there was any optimism about the NBA's labor situation entering Tuesday's crucial meeting, those hopes were dashed in the minutes afterward. "We've advised [players] they may have to sit out half the season before we get a deal," Billy Hunter, director of the NBA Players Association, told Ken Berger of CBS Sports immediately after Tuesday's meeting with NBA commissioner David Stern, deputy commissioner Adam Silver, and members of the ownership group. The meeting lasted more than five hours, with the two sides spending 3½ hours of that time deliberating with their own factions.