The NHL negotiation that led to the canceling of all of the games remaining in the season on February 16, 2005 would fall into the integrative negotiating category initially but had many more attributes of distributive bargaining. The NHL negotiation falls into this type of negotiation because the league and the players were essentially trying to find a middle ground and a win/win situation but clearly the outcome of the negotiation tells otherwise. Ultimately the negotiating took the form of distributive bargaining because the motivation was a win/lose situation and the pie was fixed when it came to player salaries and what the league would also make in terms of profits. This situation is very similar to the typical situation where an individual is requesting a certain salary and their employer is also doing the same but both parties are on different pages because of the win/lose situation. However, what is interesting in this case is that the entire remaining season was cancelled because negotiations could not come to a peaceful end with zero consideration of all other parties affect. This action on behalf of Commissioner Gary Bettman reflects poorly on his work ethic because he had zero concern about everyone else affected by his actions.
Some of the factors that led to the lack of settlement in the NHL negotiations was the actual lack of transparent negotiating on either side of the parties included. For example, the league first attempted to lower player salaries from $1.8 million per year to $1.3 million per year because they league was losing profits for two consecutive years. The player's union responded back to this negotiation with accepting an average salary of $1.4 million. Bettman then took another avenue in the negotiation and offered the player's union a player salary that was a percentage of the revenue that the league makes which would vary considerably. This idea did not sit well with the players and specific dollar amounts on salaries were negotiated again.