Who says the NHL isn't playing games?
Nothing on ice — no, but plenty in the board room. Commissioner Gary Bettman is dealing up Gimme, Gimme, and the players are hitting on 19.
Bettman looked Wednesday as if, rightly or not, he smelled blood. As the two sides in the NHL labor dispute met again in Manhattan, the players offered up another huge concession, which the commissioner promptly turned down, with thanks, to put in his pocket along with a Dec. 5 Board of Governors meeting schedule.
While there is outrage in the union ranks at being rejected again, without compromise, in a week or two this union offer toward a 50-50 revenue split will no longer seem a great concession.
Despite a union official's suggestion that it should take its offer off the table, it won't go away now, just as Bettman's October offer of 50-50 remains alive, despite supposedly expiring more than a month ago.
No, Wednesday's sweeping union giveback will shortly become the New Normal, the next starting place from where the appeasers in the union who forced Donald Fehr to produce this play will make their next concession to get themselves on ice and cashing checks. By accepting the owners' demand of percentage share rather than specified amounts, the players moved to the place where only numbers are an issue, the place where a deal can be made.
Despite the union's anger, there is now hope for Christmas hockey. But it didn't feel that way to the union.
"A lot of people that were there today, given the response they got, thought they had a lot better things to do on the day before Thanksgiving," Fehr said. Of his offer, he said the league's response was 'thanks, but no thanks.'
"They appreciated it, but reiterated that they can't move. 'Thanks, but you have to agree to what we said,' '' Fehr said.
Bettman concurred.
"That was appreciated, but we're still far apart," the commissioner said. "Hopefully, there will be some momentum from today's session to bring this process to a successful conclusion. It's frustrating and disappointing to everybody that it's taken this long, but we're going to stay at it.
"We made what was our best offer [in September], particularly to save an 82-game season. That offer was summarily rejected. To expect our best economic proposal to get better, as the damage continues to increase isn't particularly realistic.
"The business is probably losing between $18-20 million a day and the players are losing $8-10 million a day. I don't think it's realistic for anyone to expect the economic deal to get any better," Bettman said.
mark.everson@nypost.com
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