After 3 months, NHL talks negotiations

TORONTO -- The NHL and the players' association returned to negotiations Thursday for the first time in three months, looking to end the lockout that has threatened the season.\nThe sides met for about four hours at the NHL's office at the Air Canada Centre, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, before calling it a day shortly after 3 p.m. The NHLPA invited the league back to the table last week and came with a new proposal.\nThe lockout reached its 85th day Thursday, forcing the cancellation of 382 regular-season games and the 2005 All-Star game.\nThere hasn't been a negotiating session since Sept. 9, when talks broke off after the union presented a proposal based on a luxury-tax system with revenue sharing. The lockout was imposed a week later by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.\nDetails of the players' latest offer were kept under wraps, but it doesn't contain a salary-cap proposal that would give Bettman the cost certainty he is seeking for the league's 30 teams.\nThe two sides scheduled another meeting for next Tuesday or Wednesday. The site of the meeting was not immediately announced.\nThe league has given arenas the go-ahead to free dates previously reserved for hockey on a 45-day rolling basis. As of now, that means there won't be any NHL games before the middle of January.\nThe league is committed to getting a deal that provides a link between player costs and team revenues. The players' association contends the league will be satisfied only with a salary cap, something the union says it won't ever accept.\nBettman said teams lost a total of more than $1.8 billion over 10 years and that management will not agree to a deal without a defined relationship between revenue and salaries. Owners say teams lost $273 million in 2002-03 and $224 million last season.\nAn economic study commissioned by the NHL found that players get 75 percent of league revenues. The union has challenged many of the NHL's financial findings.\nThe league has been operating under the same collective bargaining agreement since 1995, when the last lockout went 103 days before a 48-game season was played. That deal was extended twice.