"My phone would ring randomly it seemed like once a week for a very long period of time. He would be calling me to update me on the negotiations, provide me on insights to the league's strategy," he said. "A call could last three minutes or it could last an hour. I assume he was doing the same thing with everybody else. He built up a lot of street cred with me, certainly. It enabled him to lead from the front and not allow a faction of owners or another faction to take over the room."

Do the owners have any incentive to get the business of playing hockey underway?

Sure. Sort of.

"There's huge pressure," a former alternate governor said. "If you're in Minnesota, you want to be back to work. Go right down the list -- New York, Los Angeles."

But, he points out, that pressure works both ways.

"Right now, there are 25 or 26 teams with players going into camp thinking they can win the Stanley Cup this year," he said. "When you have that many players that hungry because they have a team that can win, it's pressure."

So when do "negotiations" really begin?

"Maybe that pushes a little bit of something," a team executive said. "I've always said this whole time, I don't think we're going to get juice until the end of the month or the first part of October ... Once you start rolling up on missing a paycheck or missing a gate, now it's a lockout. That affects business. Let's just wait."

Custance continues, but very regrettably, the rest of his article's behind a paywall.