from Tom Gulitti of Fire & Ice,

The proposal the NHL owners made to the players last week was still on the table today when the sides met with a federal mediator, but the response from the players remained the same.

The players still aren’t interested.

“They left it for us to make a decision to see basically if we want to accept the proposal that was presented to us last week,” said former Devil Brendan Morrison, who was one of 13 players to sit in on today’s meeting. “So, it wasn’t much of a decision.”

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said after talks broke up last week that the owners’ latest proposal was off the table, but that apparently is not the case.

The sides got together with federal mediator Scot Beckenbaugh at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service’s subregional office in Iselin, the same site where the sides met with the mediators two weeks ago. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said the sides met for six and a half hours with Beckenbaugh, but “the parties were actually never in the same room.”

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