The NHL cancelled all games through Dec. 30 Monday as the dispute over a new collective bargaining agreement threatened to escalate, with the entire hockey season now in threat.
The league had already scrapped games through Dec. 14, with that decision leading to the loss of 422 games.
After latest cancellation, the NHL has lost another 104 games. The New Year's Day Winter Classic and the All-Star game were cancelled earlier as well.
The league took this decision after the latest round of talks between the owners and the players failed last week. 526 games in total have been wiped out of the 2012-13 hockey season, which means a loss of 42.8 percent of the entire year.
The current season was slated to start on Oct. 11, but not even a single game could be played, as the lockout crossed 86 days.
The NHL deputy commissioner, Bill Daly, had hinted earlier that both the sides were making efforts to come back to the negotiation table and was hopeful talks would resume this week. But as per his email to The Associated Press on Monday, fresh meetings with the players' association has not been finalized yet.
Commissioner Gary Bettman had said the minimum length of this hockey season must be at least 48 games to protect its "integrity." If the involved sides agree to start the hockey season, then they may follow 1994-95 season model, when they played 48 regular season games each.
"When it gets to the point where we can't play a season with integrity, with a representative schedule, then we'll be done," the Associated Press quoted Bettman as saying last Thursday. "If you go back in history, in '94-95 I think we played 48 games. I can't imagine wanting to play fewer than that."
It is believed that both sides were close to an agreement before talks collapsed last week. NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr had accepted Thursday night that after three straight days of negotiations he believed an agreement was close. But the NHL rejected the union's latest offer and everything went downhill from there.
"I would say it was expected," New York Rangers' union representative Martin Biron commented on the league's step to cancel games through Dec. 30, in an email to AP Monday. "We continue to stand behind Don 100 percent and the work our negotiating committee is doing and working hard to get a deal done."
Fehr did not comment on the NHL announcement.
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