from Stu Hackel of the Red Light,

Even putting the economics aside for a moment, there are significant points of differentiation and they can’t be ignored. First, the players are willing to report to training camp, play the schedule and continue to negotiate. They make the case that the lockout would be a choice made by ownership, not something they must do. Bettman’s position is that the owners won’t operate even one extra day under the terms of the old agreement. He continually insists — and says he has insisted to Fehr for months — that the union will be locked out if no new deal is reached by 11:59 PM Saturday.

The owners may believe that their stance is necessary because they suspect that if they start the season and negotiations drag, the players will strike. It seems more as if they are trying to train a dog to heel. The fact is that the threat of a lockout has been hovering over this league for at least a year, long before anyone slid a proposal across a table to the other side. It’s not a new development and that doesn’t create the kind of atmosphere that’s conducive to forging a deal, at least not one that purports to be fair to both sides.

And that leads to the second point of differentiation: How fair is what the owners have proposed to the players? Fehr emphasized that point in his remarks to the media.

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