The NHL Players' Association needed some overtime to prepare its next offer in collective bargaining.
Donald Fehr, the NHLPA's executive director, had hoped to table a counter-proposal Thursday but instead called off the session to devote more time to drafting it. The sides are scheduled to resume talks this morning.
The union received detailed team-by-team financial information from the 2011-12 season this week and spent Thursday combing through it.
It also had a new NHL proposal to work off of while coming up with a counter offer. On Tuesday, the league tabled a six-year contract that would see the players' share in revenue reduced to 46 per cent - something that didn't hold much appeal for the union.
However, the league viewed its second offer as a significant improvement on the initial proposal it tabled July 13, which called for players to receive a 43 per cent share and introduced a number of new contract restrictions.
With a Sept. 15 deadline looming for a lockout, deputy commissioner Bill Daly expressed hope Thursday the players would be motivated to sweeten the offer they made two weeks ago.
"We're hopeful it's a meaningful proposal that we can continue to make progress from," he said.
"We feel like we made a good step in that direction earlier this week and we hope that they would make a step forward as well."
Fehr was not made available to the media Thursday.
The NHL's business is essentially on hold while players and teams wait to see if an agreement can be reached in time for training camps to open as scheduled on Sept. 21.
