Lockout due to begin 12 midnight ET

There will be no last-ditch attempt to avoid another NHL lockout.
With just hours remaining on the collective bargaining agreement, deputy commissioner Bill Daly told several media outlets that he didn't expect any formal negotiations to take place before it expired at midnight on Saturday.
"We spoke again today, and in light of the fact that neither party has indicated an intention to move off of its last proposal, we have decided that there is no point in convening a formal bargaining session," he said. "We will keep in close contact in the coming days and if anything changes, I am sure we will be in touch."
CBCSports.ca's Tim Wharnsby, who is covering the labour dispute in New York, confirms that there are no formal talks planned for the rest of the day.
The NHL and NHL Players' Association let the final three days of the CBA pass without returning to the bargaining table. The league says it informed the NHLPA in November that it was unwilling to play past the expiration of the current contract and it never wavered on that view.
Steve Fehr, the NHLPA's special counsel, indicated the union requested a formal meeting with the league in New York before the "owners' self-imposed deadline" but was rebuffed.
"[Executive director] Don Fehr, myself and several players on the negotiating committee were in the city and prepared to meet," Steve Fehr said in a statement. "The NHL said that it saw no purpose in having a formal meeting. There have been and continue to be private, informal discussions between representatives of both sides."
CBC reporter Teddy Katz, who is also in New York, said, "It almost seems like the lockout has already begun."
"They had a discussion to try to see if the players' association had a new proposal, according to Daly. They didn't have a new proposal for the league, so Daly is saying there is no sense trying to sit down and have any formal bargaining at this point in time. It's not going to achieve anything. So he's more or less saying that it's not going to happen before that midnight deadline. In essence the lockout has already begun it appears."
Hockey Night in Canada commentator Elliotte Friedman doesn't believe the sides will get back to the bargaining table any time soon, and projects the lockout to end by late November.
"It’s going to be a little bit of a sit and wait," Friedman told CBC News. "I think things may get a bit harsh towards each other before they get better. It’s a situation where both sides will sit in there and wait to see if anyone else buckles first."

'We spoke again today, and in light of the fact that neither party has indicated an intention to move off of its last proposal, we have decided that there is no point in convening a formal bargaining session.'—NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly

No formal announcement about a lockout was expected at midnight. The sides last sat down together on Wednesday, with each tabling a proposal, and commissioner Gary Bettman indicated he expects the next move to come from the union.
"We made the last offer and we haven't gotten a formal response to our proposal," Bettman said Thursday. "I hope we get one and one that recognizes that we made yet another meaningful move and we're trying to engage in a negotiation."

Lockout will be immediately felt

The impact of the lockout will be felt immediately. The first pre-season games are expected to be cancelled next week and the possibility of having the regular season start as scheduled on Oct. 11 will become less and less likely with each passing day. Some players have already made contingency plans should the NHL impose a lockout on Saturday night.
"I think we're going to see it really quickly, as early as tomorrow we're going to start hearing about players signing with teams in Europe, in the different leagues there," said Katz. "One of the agents was actually tweeting about that a couple of days ago, saying that he's got a slew of deals in the works. He's gonna announce them as early as tomorrow.
"We're going to start seeing pre-season — or the training camps are supposed to open next week, pre-season games are supposed to happen in about eight or nine days' time. We're going to start probably seeing some of those games cancelled. And then you have to wonder about the start of this season, which is early in October — October the 11th is the actual date — and you gotta wonder if that actually is gonna happen now or if it's gonna be pushed back.
During the lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season, both the league and individual teams decided to lay off employees. On Saturday, Daly said the NHL has no plans to cut staff "at this point in time."
A number of players are expected to seek alternative opportunities in Europe, with the Russian-based KHL offering the most financial appeal. Switzerland, Sweden and Finland will also likely be popular destinations.
Players aren't scheduled to receive the first of 13 NHL paycheques this season until Oct. 15 — something they'll miss if the lockout extends past that date. There are no immediate plans for them to receive a stipend from the union.
Even the main negotiators will stop being paid. Bettman and Daly both committed to giving up their salary during the lockout while NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr stopped collecting a paycheque at the start of July as a sign of solidarity with his membership.
With the sides struggling to agree on how to divide up $3.28 billion US in annual revenues, both lamented the damage that is bound to be inflicted by engaging in another work stoppage.
"Hockey is poised, I think, to really move over the next three or four years to a fundamentally different place than it's been before," said Fehr. "The question is whether the dispute we're currently having is going to screw that up. If so, that's bad and that's unfortunate — we ought to be doing what we can to avoid it."
Added Bettman: "Even a brief lockout will cost more in lost revenue and wages than making a deal we think we need to make."
For the last several weeks, all of the secondary issues have been pushed aside so that talks could focus solely on the league's core economic system.

Revenue sharing debate

The NHL believes too much money is being paid out in salaries and has proposed a system to address it. They're calling for the players' share in revenue to be set at 49 per cent next season — down from 57 per cent in the expiring deal — and proposed that it drops to 47 per cent by the end of the six-year deal.
The union tabled an offer where the salary cap would be set to fixed increases of two per cent, four per cent and six per cent over the next three years. The system would then revert to a percentage-based system for the final two years.
Both sides in the dispute have questioned whether the other actually wanted to avoid a lockout.
"We all kind of feel that's what they are looking for," Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said after a meeting of more than 275 players in New York this week. "If you look at the key principles of everything, we're showing we're willing to move, to sacrifice things.
"If you look at [the NHL] proposal, it's not really the same type of feeling."
The last round of negotiations saw the sides cancel an entire season before the NHLPA eventually relented and accepted a salary cap. However, it didn't end up working out so badly for players as the average salary rose to $2.45 million over the course of the CBA.
"It actually turned out to be more fair than perhaps it should have been," said Bettman.
And so the NHL heads into its fourth work stoppage in two decades.
An 11-day strike in April 1992 caused 30 games to be postponed, while a 103-day lockout in 1994-95 forced the cancellation of 468 games and delayed the season's start until Jan. 20. The 2004 lockout began Sept. 16 and wasn't settled until July 13 — making the NHL the first North American sports league to ever cancel an entire season over a labour dispute.