Players Get Ultimatum, Reject Offer : NHL: Ziegler issues threat before vote by player representatives, then gives them until noon Thursday.

John Ziegler, NHL president, issued an ultimatum Tuesday to striking players: Accept the owners’ latest proposal by Thursday or forget about playing again this season.

And, perhaps, ever again.

Player representatives from the 22 teams took less than an hour in New York to unanimously reject the new proposal on Day 7 of the first strike in the league’s 75-year history, but Ziegler said the offer will remain on the table until noon PDT Thursday.

“If the players reject this, the season will be canceled,” Ziegler said before the player representatives voted. “There will be no champion. And we don’t know if we will ever have a season again.”

Said the Quebec Nordiques’ Marcel Aubut, a member of the owners’ negotiating committee: “The season is over.”

The owners’ proposal, their second “final” offer in 12 days, dealt with the two crucial issues that have brought the league to the edge of disaster--free agency and trading-card revenue.

“This offer is not negotiable,” Ziegler said. “We will talk only to clarify any items that need clarification. . . . It’s a very sincere and last effort on the part of the owners to save the 75th season of the National Hockey League. I can’t think of any instance in the history of professional sports where owners have made these kinds of concessions. . . . The question I have is why (the player representatives) didn’t allow their (full) membership to vote on the proposal.”

Ziegler said the new proposal creates total free agency for any player who makes less than the average salary and has 10 years in the league, and gives the players complete freedom to use their pictures on trading cards.

But Bob Goodenow, executive director of the players association, disputed that claim, saying the proposal does not give the players complete freedom in the card issue.

As for free agency, a player would have to be making less than the average salary after a decade in the league to benefit under the owners’ proposal.

“The proposal indicates the owners have no intention of reaching an agreement,” Goodenow said.

Both King owner Bruce McNall and his star player, Wayne Gretzky, have been actively involved in trying to break the deadlock, meeting in New York with both Ziegler and Goodenow.

“I personally tried to resolve these issues myself with the players association,” McNall said in a prepared statement. “We all (NHL owners) understood that the trading-card issue was the only remaining, contending roadblock on the table in the attempt to resolve the strike. Now that we gave them (players) back all rights to trading cards forever, it is extremely upsetting that they would reject our offer.

“I’m very upset. I really thought the players would return to work, especially when we resolved the trading-card issue. They obviously have something else on their mind.

“Nonetheless, we will continue to keep working on these certain issues to try and reach a resolution by Thursday’s deadline.”

If an agreement is reached by Thursday, the regular season will resume Sunday and the playoffs will start April 18.

Gretzky said: “It looks like it’s a matter of who’ll blink first.”