With one week to go before Christmas, there appears to be little holiday cheer between the two sides in the NHL lockout.
On Tuesday, the 94th day of the labour stoppage, NHL Players' Association special counsel Steve Fehr reached out to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly via a short phone call.
But from that contact, there is still nothing scheduled in terms of resuming the stalled bargaining talks.
According to TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun of ESPN.com, while it's not 100 per cent, it's likely that the NHL will cancel more games before the end of this week.
The last time the league took games off the schedule was on Dec. 10. At that point all games through Dec. 30 were cancelled, with 526 games called off in total along with the Winter Classic and All-Star Game.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman suggested at a press conference on Dec. 6 that a shortened NHL schedule should not be less than 48 games. If that were the case then a new labour agreement would need be struck by the middle of January at the latest to allow that many games to be played.
