Commissioner Gary Bettman made the NHL's intent very clear Thursday, saying the league plans to lock the players out if a new collective bargaining agreement cannot be reached by Sept. 15, the date the current CBA is set to expire. Bettman said this stance was reiterated to the NHL Players' Association during the day's bargaining session. "I reconfirmed something that the union has been told multiple times over the last nine to 12 months, namely that the time is getting short and the owners are not prepared to operate under this collective bargaining agreement for another season, so we need to get to making a deal and doing it soon," Bettman said outside of the league's offices in midtown Manhattan. "And we believe there's ample time for the parties to get together and make a deal, and that's what we're going to be working toward." The two sides, which have been engaged in labor talks for six weeks, face a significant divide on a number of issues and have only five weeks to broker a new deal. "Our efforts are going to be devoted to making a deal, but as I said the owners are not going to operate under the economics of this collective bargaining agreement," Bettman said. Read more: http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/8...e-commissioner-gary-bettman-updates-cba-talks
