Things were going swimmingly on Wednesday night. A few details needed to be hammered out, but the players felt confident with where talks were headed—confident enough that they suggested federal mediators return to help ‘polish this off,”as Hainsey said.

The owners declined.

"As confident as some of players are on their issues, we cannot close deals. I'd love to think I could,” Hainsey said, “We cannot."

Steve Fehr was there, but the job of closing the deal belongs to Donald Fehr. He is the executive director of the NHLPA, after all.

"Once we made clear that ... we had to get our union leadership, that we've hired for this, in the room, there was just a very big change," Hainsey said on Thursday, after talks broke down. "It was alarming, and I was told that if we were going to do that, it was possibly a dealbreaker. That was made clear last night. It was confusing, because we kind of agreed that we were moving toward each other, and we weren't that far apart. So, it's confusing for the players to think that we were supposed to finish this ourselves."

Hainsey was then asked to confirm, point blank, what he had just said: The owners told you that bringing Don Fehr into the room would be a dealbreaker for the progress you had achieved?

"That's correct," Hainsey said.