How the N.H.L. Players' Union Would Decertify Momentum is building for the N.H.L. Players' Association to decertify as a union and use the threat of antitrust lawsuits to pressure Commissioner Gary Bettman and the league's owners to come to a quick settlement, ending their 10-week lockout. Last week Sabres goalie Ryan Miller told a Canadian newspaper that he favored decertification. He cited the decertification of the N.F.L. and N.B.A. players' unions for helping to bring prompt ends to those leagues' 2011 lockouts. (Only the N.B.A. players' move succeeded - they decertified quickly, filed two lawsuits, and the league settled within a couple of weeks. The football players had to wait four months for a settlement after decertifying.) Also last week, the top two officials in the N.H.L. players' association, Donald Fehr and Steve Fehr, declined to comment substantively when asked about the tactic by reporters. Meanwhile, Bill Duffy, the agent for the Canadian N.B.A. star Steve Nash, said the N.H.L. players should "absolutely" decertify, although, he added, they should have done it three months ago. Decertifying would be a big step for the N.H.L. players - and a time-consuming one. Here's how it would work for the 23 player labor units in the United States. The seven Canada-based units would have to follow separate decertification procedures in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia. 1) First, the membership must sign a petition to decertify. If at least 30 percent of the members sign, the process begins. 2) The petition goes to the National Labor Relations Board. a) If 30 to 49 percent of the membership signed the petition, the board sets a decertification election date, usually about 60 days after approving the petition. b) If 50 percent or more signed, the employer may immediately withdraw recognition of the union. But the N.H.L. would be unlikely to do so because it would allow the players to immediately begin filing antitrust lawsuits against the league. 3) Once the labor relations board sets an election date, the union holds a decertification vote on that date. If a majority votes in favor, the union is decertified and its status changes to trade association. 4) The trade association can file antitrust lawsuits against the employer. It would likely take at least two months for the N.H.L. Players' Association to decertify, so if the qualifying petition were submitted by Dec. 1, the filing of antitrust lawsuits could not begin until Feb. 1. Even if the N.H.L. buckled immediately, that would probably be too late to save the season. That may have been the basis for Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly's assertion last week on Toronto radio that decertification would "likely lead to the end of the season." But even the submission of a qualifying petition could signal to the owners that the union is on the road to antitrust court actions - and that threat alone may be real enough to break the owners' intransigence. That is basically what happened with the N.B.A. last year, and what Miller and the militant faction of N.H.L. players are advocating now.