With the collective bargaining agreement set to expire on Sept. 15, the talks between the owners and the NHLPA (led by Donald Fehr), could be lengthy. The owners decided to open with a joke. 

It’s a negotiation, so the news of the owners asking for the moon this weekend shouldn’t come as a huge shock, but their first proposal was as laughable and outrageous as both laughable and outrageous get, and it was the first of what will probably be quite a few. 

Renaud P. Lavoie of RDS and Larry Brooks of the New York Post came out with the news Friday, and it was only natural to be taken aback by how unrealistic a stance the owners took right off the bat. 

Here are the main points of the owners’ proposal, per Lavoie:

1. The players' hockey-related revenues would be reduced from 57 percent to 46 percent.

2. Players would have to play 10 seasons in the NHL before they would qualify for unrestricted free agency.

3. Contracts won’t exceed five years.

4. No more salary arbitration.

5. Entry-level contract are for five years rather than three.

If that were the only proposal made, then yes, hockey fans would indeed have reason to worry about a lockout. It would be a one-million-year lockout because the Players’ Association wouldn’t accept that deal in a million years. That isn’t the case though, and you can bet that when the two sides to agree on the next CBA, it won’t look much like what the owners asked for on Friday. 

For starters, the players shouldn’t feel they’re in a position to give as much money back as the owners want. The NHL had its most fruitful year yet last season, hauling in $3.2 billion in revenue. These owners aren’t hemorrhaging money, they’re making more of it than ever before. 

While the proposed giveback stands out as deal-breaker No. 1, the proposals regarding contracts and free agency raise enough eyebrows in their own right. 

In the current CBA, a player needs to have either played seven years in the league or be 27 years of age in order to be an unrestricted free agent. Ten years in the league before a player can reach unrestricted free agency, as the owners are proposing, means that unless you’re the first overall pick (or perhaps another very high pick that makes the NHL the very next season such as Tyler Seguin or Gabriel Landeskog), you aren’t given the opportunity to get paid on the open market until perhaps your early 30s. 

If the 10-year-rule existed in the current CBA, that would mean a player like Johnny Boychuk, who came into the league late and has just three NHL seasons under his belt at age 28, wouldn’t be looking at unrestricted free agency until he was 35. Ten NHL seasons before unrestricted free agency is a payday-killer and a half.  

Then there’s the proposed changes to entry-level contracts. Expanding entry-level deals to five years means that youngsters can’t establish themselves as the best in the business and get paid like it, much like Steven Stamkos did when he signed his five-year, $37.5 million deal at 21 years of age. That’s a situation the Bruins might be looking at after the coming season with Tyler Seguin, as his entry-level deal has one more year on it and he could take his offensive game to another level after leading the B’s with 29 goals and 67 points last year. 

The most interesting of the five points is the limit on the length of contracts. Teams should have the right to go out and throw all sorts of dollars and years at players as long as they aren’t clear-cut retirement deals. Of course, if players aren’t hitting free agency until they’re, say, 32 years old, the 13-year deals probably wouldn’t be coming anyway. 

Peter Chiarelli has only given out two contracts that have exceeded five years since the lockout: Zdeno Chara’s current deal (seven years, $45.5 million) and Marc Savard’s current deal (seven years, $28.05). 

While Chara’s deal probably will be a good value throughout its duration and nobody could have seen the Savard situation coming, Chiarelli has generally let the rest of the league dole out the mammoth contracts. That’s part of what makes him one of the better executives in the game. Granted, Dennis Seidenberg isn’t quite on Ryan Suter’s level, but the Wild signed the 27-year-old Suter for 13 years and $98 million while two offseasons ago Chiarelli inked a 28-year-old Seidenberg for $13 million over four years. Which deal would you rather have?

That’s where these proposed changes actually could hurt the Bruins. If you limit the crazy things teams can do to get players -- things Chiarelli generally has steered clear of for the sake of having a deep roster -- you begin forcing teams to operate more like Chiarelli, who, Chara and Savard aside, inks his stars to deals (think Patrice Bergeron’s three-year, $15 million pact) that don’t register on the Richter Scale.

Again, it would be surprising if you end up seeing these points end up in the next CBA. The players shouldn’t give up that much money or limit their opportunities for paydays and they probably won’t. This thing is far from over, especially if the owners expected their first proposal to be taken seriously.