TORONTO (CP) - The NHL's labour talks will resume Wednesday in Toronto, with the 2004-05 season hanging in the balance.
Officially, both the league and the NHL Players' Association were not saying where or when the meeting would take place, but sources confirmed to The Canadian Press that the talks would be Wednesday in Canada's largest city.
One thing's for sure, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow will once again sit this one out.
''Today, the league contacted our office to arrange for continued small-group discussions,'' said NHLPA senior director Ted Saskin. ''We agreed to this request.''
The same group will meet again: NHLPA president Trevor Linden being joined on the union side by Saskin and outside counsel John McCambridge while the league will have Bill Daly, the NHL's executive vice-president and chief legal officer, outside counsel Bob Batterman and board of governors chairman Harley Hotchkiss.
Hotchkiss missed Thursday's second day of talks in Toronto after attending the Calgary funeral of fellow Flames part-owner J.R. (Bud) McCaig.
The 11th-hour talks resume with the league rumoured to be working on a new proposal.
But Daniel Alfredsson, the vice-president of the NHL Players' Association, isn't optimistic an agreement can be reached between the two sides.
''I would be very surprise if we were able to get an agreement,'' Alfredsson said. ''We're not going to accept a hard cap but it's good we're talking.''
The two sides met last Wednesday and Thursday at the request of Linden, but the Vancouver Canucks centre came away frustrated by what he heard - the league still insisting on a salary cap.
It's believed the NHL met this weekend and worked on a new offer, one it believes may address some of the NHLPA's concerns. At the very least, the league will likely come armed with new ideas and concepts aimed at appeasing some of the union's issues but at the same time definitely still including cost certainty.
Linden and some of his fellow players came out swinging last Friday, suggesting the season was likely done given the league's insistence on a fixed link between player costs and league revenue - a salary cap. But the tough talk Friday may have been by design, hoping the league would react by softening their new offer.
Linden also told the union's 700-odd players via a message on the NHLPA's private website not to expect hockey this year.
More than half of the NHL season has already been scrapped by the lockout, which was announced Sept. 15 by Bettman. Through Monday, 699 of the season's 1,230 regular-season games had gone by the wayside.
The league has never announced a drop-dead date to save the season, but few believe there can be hockey this season if there's no agreement before the end of the month - or perhaps the end of this week.
None of the four major professional sports in North America has ever gone beginning to end without a single game played. The Stanley Cup is in danger of not being awarded for the first time since the Spanish flu wiped out the 1919 final.