Summer school: the end of the current labor agreement in 2004 looms over everything in the NHL, including a free-agent class that is about to learn a hard lesson in economics. (NHL).(National Hockey League)

This is the summer of preparation for the NHL and its teams. They must get their houses in order before the inevitable arrives. The NHL collective bargaining agreement, a lengthy legal document that has taken on a life of its own, expires on September 15, 2004. It will, after lengthy, contentious negotiations, be reborn, certainly in an altered form. But for now, its expiration looms with no date promised for new life. The scheduled demise is known, but what happens next is only speculation.

That speculation hangs over this summer's free-agent period, which began July 1, when center Sergei Fedorov, defenseman Derian Hatcher and winger Teemu Selanne became the ...