NEW YORK (AFP) - The National Hockey League was in the deep freeze, with no indication that the league's labor woes could be resolved in time to save any of the 2004-05 season.
"I know we all want to play, but at the same time, we want a fair deal and we're not going to play hockey until we get that," Florida Panthers goaltender Roberto Luongo said after the NHL locked out players at midnight on Wednesday - when the collective bargaining agreement expired.
That's the same line NHL commissioner Gary Bettman took in announcing the long-expected lockout on Wednesday afternoon - saying owners were prepared to sacrifice the season in order to achieve what they see as a financial imperative - some kind of salary cap.
"A salary cap is not even a starting point for us to talk about. Until the owners cave in, there's not going to be any hockey," Luongo said. "We believe in our principles, and until we get what we think is fair, the owners are going to lock us out."
Training camps had been scheduled to start on Thursday, soon to be followed by exhibition games and the opening of the season on October 13.
Instead, Bettman told teams they could make their arenas available to other users for at least a month.
But it seemed unlikely the matter would be resolved by then, with many predicting the cancellation of the entire season and the failure to award the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1919, when an influenza epidemic prevented conclusion of the finals.
In the last such work stoppage in the NHL, the league locked out players for 103 days in 1994, and then played an abbreviated 48-game season.
On Wednesday, Bettman laid the blame squarely on the players.
"Our game deserves better than a union in denial," Bettman said. "The union doesn't seem to care about the problems, the game or our fans."
In hockey terms, he said, the union "is instigating a fight. They think they can win this fight. ... They're wrong."
NHL Players Association chief Bob Goodenow called it "stupid and ridiculous" to say the players had picked the fight.
But he said the players wouldn't back down on their insistence that salaries should not be tied to league revenues.
"A lot of you know hockey players," Goodenow said. "You know what they're about. You know how they feel about their profession, their game, their principles."
And Goodenow said the lockout was a strongarm tactic to try to break the players' resolve on the salary cap issue.
"An honest partnership can never be achieved under the league's 'My way or the highway' approach," Goodenow said. "Partnerships are built on respect, trust and willingness to compromise. Partnerships are not built through confrontation.
"Nonetheless, Gary and the owners have chosen, through a lockout, to try to force players to accept a system they know players would never agree to."
Bettman says the league has lost a combined 1.8 billion dollars over the past decade. Owners want to player payroll linked to a fixed percentage of revenue.
Players have challenged the league's figures, and say its own proposal including a luxury tax, a five percent drop in salaries and revenue sharing would solve the problems.
The last meeting between the parties was a week ago, and Goodenow said he didn't know when negotiations might resume.
"There's no set guideline or protocol as to when a call is made or a visit is made or anything like that right now," he said.