The National Hockey League has mercifully established what amounts to a drop-dead date for saving its season: this weekend.

For months, Commissioner Gary Bettman has carefully avoided setting any time frames to end the lockout that has now wiped out 813 of the 1,230 games. But if what he said yesterday is any indication, we should know the fate of the 2004-05 NHL season by midnight on Sunday.

“If we’re not working on a written document memorializing our agreement this weekend, I don’t see how we can play any semblance of a season,” Bettman said in a press conference last night, adding that if a deal were reached, there would be a 28-game regular season followed by a traditional 16-team playoff.

Bettman’s statement followed a secret meeting with NHLPA head Bob Goodenow, during which the union rejected yet another proposal from the owners.

In what was initially described as a compromise offer, the owners agreed to resume play using the players’ December 9 proposal, which called for a 24% salary rollback and luxury taxes designed to put a drag on player salaries. Only if the system didn’t work – and player costs escalated – would the owners implement a system of their own.

On the surface, this seems reasonable, for it would give the players a chance to prove the viability of their system. However, the owners also proposed four scenarios that would cause the agreement to revert to what the league proposed on February 2 – a salary cap between $32-42 million.

“The NHL delivered a one-page concept to us which they tried to suggest represented a compromise,” Goodenow said. “The league’s proposal was a transparent attempt to impose on our December 9 proposal the effects of their twice-rejected February 2 triple cap proposal.”

Goodenow claimed that one of the four triggers is essentially certain to occur, and that the other three would be easily reached.

The first trigger would kick in if the players’ total compensation were to exceed 55% of the league’s reported revenue. The second would fire if three teams’ payrolls exceeded a ceiling of $42 million (four teams – Detroit, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Toronto – currently have payrolls that would exceed $42 million even after a 24% rollback).

The third trigger stated that the average of the three highest payrolls could not be more than 33% higher than the average of the three lowest payrolls. As an attempt to establish some parity within the economic system, this makes some sense. But the disparity in revenue between the league’s upper- and lower-echelon teams is huge, and without meaningful revenue sharing, it’s unlikely that teams like Pittsburgh and Nashville could afford payrolls within 33% of Detroit and Toronto.

The fourth trigger would go into effect if the average of all 30 payrolls were to exceed $36.5 million, essentially capping what players could earn even if 55% of league revenue were to exceed anticipated levels.

“All of our proposals have been intended to create a framework where we’re paying the players what we can afford to pay,” said Bettman. “We don’t want to pay the players less than we can afford to pay, and we’re not prepared to pay more than we can afford to pay.”

The notion that a company would not want to reduce employee costs in order to increase profits is hard to believe, however, and in making such a statement, Bettman was insulting the intelligence of his audience. Of course, both sides have been insulting their fan base for months with endless spin doctoring, leaving their customers in the lurch while they categorize this labor dispute as necessary.

As if the farcical nature of this dispute weren’t already clear enough, Bettman also paid homage to the players’ tenacity.

“I have tremendous respect for our players,” he asserted. “The fact that on a philosophical issue – which long-term may make no economic sense – they are prepared apparently to forego over a billion dollars in compensation this year, and perhaps hundred of millions of dollars in the future, I don’t understand it, but you have to respect it.”

As this debacle drags on, both sides are losing the respect of their fans, even in hockey-mad Canada.

“I think that there are a number of fans in [Canada] who have sensed over the last number of months that actually maybe it was more habit than it was passion,” Ken Dryden told the Associated Press earlier this week. “You never want to give a fan a chance to find out whether it was passion or habit.”

Mr. Greenstein is the editor-in-chief of InsideHockey.com.