NHL Talks to Focus on Existing Efforts

Any chance of saving the NHL season rests on continued dialogue rather than on introducing proposals at today’s meeting in Toronto, both sides said as they prepared for the session.

A small group representing the NHL and the NHL Players’ Assn. will try to make headway to end the 132-day lockout, which has wiped out 707 regular-season games and the All-Star game.

Talks hinge on how owners can achieve the “cost certainty” sought by Commissioner Gary Bettman without imposing a hard salary cap, which players have said they won’t accept.

With time short before it would become impractical to play a season, Bill Daly, the NHL’s executive vice president and chief legal officer, said he would discuss what has been put forth and not make a new proposal that might spark time-consuming debate. The union has also said it won’t make a new offer.

“Both parties agreed at last week’s meeting that the time for formal proposals, at least during this process, may be behind us, and we should try to sit at the table and discuss through the issues and maybe jointly craft something that might work,” Daly said in a statement Tuesday.

That echoed what Vancouver Canuck center Trevor Linden, the players’ union president, told Canadian Press last week. “A proposal does not do anything for us,” Linden said. “We have a better chance working in a room and working mutually together on this.”

The prospects of another meeting seemed to do little to blunt the growing concern that the season is all but lost.

“The players are done making concessions,” said Ron Salcer, a prominent agent. “It’s a cloudy picture, unfortunately a bleak picture.”

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh Penguin owner Mario Lemieux withdrew from a celebrity golf tournament and reportedly is going to be in Toronto today. Daly denied that Lemieux would be part of the meeting.