NHL Owners Are Prepared for Lockout : Hockey: If there is no progress soon in stalled collective bargaining talks, commissioner says training camps will not open.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, attempting to inject urgency into collective bargaining talks with players, has imposed a deadline of Labor Day weekend to see appreciable progress in the negotiations.

If no movement has resulted by then, he will authorize a training-camp lockout, a course that was endorsed by club executives at a board of governors meeting Wednesday in New York.

“This is not saber-rattling,” an NHL official said. “He (Bettman) is afraid the season is at risk without substantive collective bargaining talks. There’s still a lot of time to make a deal and a lot of willingness to sit and talk.”

Thursday’s Toronto Star said Bettman had the full backing of his owners to initiate a lockout should negotiations remain stalemated. Players are due to report to camp for physicals on Sept. 4 and workouts the next day. The season is scheduled to open Oct. 1. The sides have not met since last Thursday and are not scheduled to meet again.

Bettman’s intention is to negotiate throughout camp and into the season should the talks progress within the next 10 days.

“We’re going into it with our eyes open,” the Star quoted an unidentified owner as saying about the possibility of a lockout. “We know it could last months and the season could be at risk. No one wants that, but it’s better to bring the issue to a head now than to go through what baseball is facing (a midseason strike).”

Players have been without a contract for more than a year. Mike Gartner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, president of the NHL Players Assn., said players are prepared to begin this season without a new pact.

“If they’re talking about a lockout, it’s a very aggressive step,” Gartner said.

Bob Goodenow, executive director of the NHL Players Assn., said he had not received any notice of a possible lockout and refused to speculate on Bettman’s intentions.

“I have not heard officially from the league on what his plans may or may not be,” Goodenow said.

The key difference is the owners’ desire to link salaries to revenue. The NBA and NFL do so in the form of salary caps, a term Bettman is reluctant to apply to the NHL. However, players insist a salary cap by any other name is equally restrictive.

“We clearly want an agreement, but there’s one major principle (revenue-salary linkage) that is a non-starter for us and we can’t seem to get over it,” Goodenow said last week.

Said Arthur Pincus, the NHL’s senior vice president for public relations: “If negotiations fall apart, it isn’t because we are asking for a salary cap. . . . Our intention is to make a deal and we are totally focused on making a deal.”