The portly opera star is warming up her voice, but she isn’t quite ready to start singing.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and players union chief Bob Goodenow met yesterday at an undisclosed location in New York in a last-ditch effort to end the lockout and save the 2004-05 NHL season.

The meeting reportedly began in the early afternoon, but the two sides had neither announced a deal nor canceled the season when this edition of The New York Sun went to print. Several hours into the negotiations, the league released a statement indicating that the negotiations could continue well into the night.

“In deference to the process, there will be no comment, and no further update is expected tonight,” the statement said.

That was followed by a brief release from the NHLPA just before 11 p.m., in which the union declared that the meetings had closed for the day, with another session planned for today.

The Hockey News reported yesterday that Goodenow would once again present Bettman with the NHLPA’s December offer containing a 24% salary rollback and a luxury tax (but no salary cap). As the hours ticked by, however, it seemed increasingly unlikely that Bettman would have taken all that time to listen to a proposal he’d heard already. For this reason, hockey fans have good reason to hope that after months of grandstanding, the two men have finally begun negotiating in good faith.

The lockout has wiped out 772 regular-season games thus far, and the rest of the 1,230-game schedule could be called off within days if a solution isn’t arrived at quickly.

Though the players rejected the proposal submitted by the NHL on Wednesday, it was the first to provide some significant concessions. The owners did not back off on their demand for cost certainty, this time proposing a “floating team payroll range.”

The owners’ proposal stipulated that clubs would be able to spend no less than $29.8 million and no more than $40 million, guaranteeing the players between 53% and 55% of the league’s aggregate income. However, the owners did capitulate on a number of other issues deemed important by the union, including guaranteed salaries and profit sharing.

Early on in these negotiations, the players objected to the notion of a salary cap on the grounds that it would mean the end of guaranteed contracts. While the owners’ position on the issue was never officially stated either way in their previous proposals, on Wednesday they formally agreed to retain guaranteed contracts.

This is not necessarily a good thing. One need only look at the Rangers’ commitment to Bobby Holik ($9 million per year for five years) or the Islanders’ deal with Alexei Yashin ($10 million per year for nine years) to see that guaranteed contracts can quickly turn into albatrosses around the owners’ necks. In most cases where a buyout would be desirable, it is clear that the player is performing far below the expectations created during contract negotiations.

Rather than fighting so vehemently for a salary cap, perhaps the owners should have instead negotiated for the option to buy out contracts for 20% of their remaining value. This way, players who don’t perform at the anticipated level can be easily lopped off the payroll, a solution that would help the owners manage their businesses more efficiently.

The league also offered Wednesday to give the players a 50/50 share of profits above a negotiated threshold (believed to be approximately $115 million). The timing of this offer was quite strange, and it, too, gives cause for great concern with regard to the owners’ collective approach to their hockey businesses.

In the short term, the 50/50 share of profits would not have much of an impact. As long as there are teams struggling in hockey wastelands like Nashville and Raleigh, it is unlikely that the league will collectively profit to a degree that would provide the players with meaningful additional compensation.

The notion of collective revenue and profit is puzzling in and of itself. There is no correlation between what the Red Wings and Predators earn; because most of the NHL’s revenues are localized, the teams’ income streams are, for the most part, separate and distinct.

Moreover, if the league were to turn things around and see a big jump in annual revenue, its commitment to share profits with the players to such an aggressive degree could have disastrous implications with regard to franchise values. Better the owners figure out a way to share revenues amongst themselves, thereby ensuring that what they share goes towards their own collective long-term good.

An owner of a major-league sports team told me yesterday that the players were “idiots” for turning down the owners’ proposal.

“There aren’t enough downside protections for owners,” he said on the condition of anonymity, “and all the upside is now shared and limited.”

It is strange that the players would turn down a proposal that would provide them with such a significant stake in the league’s future success, but they appear instead to be stuck asking themselves this question: If the owners cannot share among themselves, how can we expect to benefit from a partnership with them? There is no clear answer, and unless something dramatic happens in the next 72 hours, the players are likely going to continue their exodus to Europe.

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In a strange twist, Red Wings stars Derian Hatcher, Kris Draper, and Chris Chelios began suiting up for the Motor City Mechanics of the United Hockey League this week.

In so doing, the trio made clear that they hold the NHL owners to a different standard than they do their new employers. The UHL is a non-union league that employs a salary cap, and the most any player can earn is $1,000 per week. For the three Red Wings millionaires to take jobs away from UHL regulars is wrong, and their purported desire to stay in shape is simply not an adequate justification.

On a similar note, Edmonton Oilers enforcer Georges Laraque has agreed to terms on a contract with AIK Stockholm of the Swedish Elite League. It was just two months ago that Laraque spoke out against his NHLPA brethren who had crossed the pond, accusing them of taking jobs from other players.

Laraque defended his new position this week, and at least he had the decency to acknowledge the hypocrisy of it all.

“I still don’t agree with it,” he told the Edmonton Sun. “But whether I agree or not, I’m not the most talented player in the NHL and I don’t want to lose the whole year of hockey. That’s not good for me. Some people depend on those jobs, I know, but if I stick by my principles and lose my job because I’m not improving, what about that? Sometimes, you have to do what’s best for you.”

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief of insidehockey.com.