When will Daniel Paille have an offseason?

He may have one every year, but Paille’s certainly kept busy in each of the last two summers. The last offseason was jubilation, and this one could be doom and gloom. 

In 2011, the Bruins’ season ended in mid-June, with celebrations, appearances and all sorts of glitz and glam packed into the already-shortened summer. This year, Paille’s certainly had more time off from hockey after the Bruins’ disappointing first-round loss to the Capitals, but much like a college student, he’s had a summer job to keep him occupied. 

As the Bruins’ player representative in the NHL Players’ Association, Paille is the team’s go-to guy when it comes to this summer’s negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA is set to expire on Sept. 15, and though games could conceivably be played without a new agreement, it isn’t something worth banking on. 

“Negotiations seem to be moving fairly well right now,” Paille said Thursday after spending time doing yoga with students at the Kennedy School at Franciscan Hospital. “Right now, our main focus is just to start a season. We know it's a process, but it shouldn't be too bad. Everyone's main goal is to start the season.”

Paille took over for Mark Stuart as the Bruins’ player rep when Boston traded Stuart to the Thrashers in February 2011. While his role has consisted of making himself available to any questions teammates may have, this summer figures to carry a heavier workload. Led by Donald Fehr, the NHLPA is trying to hoping to make these negotiations work out better than the last time, when prolonged talks led to a lockout and the cancellation of the 2004-05 season.

“For my particular role, I find out how negations are going and what they're talking about, and then eventually I just try to inform the players as much as I can,” Paille said, noting he has gotten to travel a bit this offseason. “I won't necessarily contact players, but if players contact me I'll give them as much information as I know and do the best I can that way.”

Along with teammate and former Bruins’ player rep Andrew Ference, Paille was in Chicago last month to meet with Fehr for the NHLPA meetings.  

“Chicago was pretty much a positive format for us,” Paille said. “We basically went through the details of the season and pretty much what's to come. At that point we didn't know anything from the NHL's standpoint, so we just kind of focused on what we wanted to work on and main points like that. … It was very knowledgeable for me to be there to learn more of the legal issues that there are. It's not as bad as it may seem.”

The players have since heard from the NHL, and the news is that the league started the negotiations with as clear as a start-high-meet-in-the-middle stance as they could. The NHL’s first proposal asked for a shocking amount, including an 11 percent giveback on revenues on the players’ part and a required 10 years of NHL experience in order to qualify for unrestricted free agency. Other demands included a limit of five years for all contracts, the expansion of entry-level deals from three to five years, and the end of salary arbitration. 

“It's a proposal, and we were expecting a proposal from them -- we just didn't know to what extent,” Paille said. “For us, we took and it looked at the proposal and now we've just got to analyze and see what happens and ask certain questions. The good news is there's always room for negotiating. As long as there's that, there won't be a problem.”

The league and the NHLPA met again Wednesday at league offices in New York for upwards of two hours to continue negotiations, though the Players’ Association has yet to make a counteroffer. 

“We requested further information,” Fehr told reporters. “The initial proposal we are looking hard at. We’re not at that stage (to submit a counter) yet. At the appropriate point in time, we’ll make our proposal.”

If he wanted, Paille could look at his teammates and see any number of reasons as to why the league’s first proposal isn’t ideal. Take Johnny Boychuk, for example: He paid his dues in the AHL for five years and persevered when he finally played 51 games in the NHL in 2009-10, but a player in a similar situation under the proposed CBA wouldn’t reach unrestricted free agency until he was 35. 

That’s where Paille says he’s careful to consider everything. He knows that while he wants what's in everyone's best interest, he needs to look at both sides of each argument and each point. 

“It's not necessarily my personal opinions [that matter],” he said. “It's us as a group. I think we've got to look at it that way and look at the big picture more than ourselves. I think everyone of the aspects have a certain [impact] on how a certain player feels. I think for us, it's how we deal with it.”

As long as the games are played, Paille, who signed a three-year extension with the B’s this summer, will be happy. He hopes that’s the case, but given that it’s so early in the process, he knows not to rule anything out. 

“For me, I always look at things in a positive way,” Paille said. “I think that's just my personality, and I think it's something good to have. … We can see how things play out, but I think right now it's too early. We'll see in the next few weeks and next month or so how severe it is, but right now it seems to be going very well.”