The NHL and NHLPA remained at an impasse in the latest round of collective bargaining talks as the deadline for a lockout looms.

The players' association took issue Wednesday with the latest NHL proposal that commissioner Gary Bettman called ''meaningful'' and ''significant.''

Donald Fehr, the NHLPA's executive director, and his assistants have broken down Bettman's latest offering. Fehr is expected to make a counterproposal as early as Thursday.

The two sides are at odds over hockey-related revenue. The league wants to knock down the players' percentage to 46. The players' share of HRR was 57 percent last season. Fehr said changes in how HRR is calculated would see the amount of money players give up to escrow increase ''significantly.'' Under the NHL's proposal, the union said current contracts would not be paid in full.

''From a players' standpoint, you should understand, it doesn't make much of a difference,'' Fehr said Wednesday. ''Should the player not get the dollar value that is on his contract because there is a rollback, which is simply a name for crossing out one number and writing in another, or whether he doesn't get an amount because there is escrow, he still doesn't get it.''

The current CBA expires Sept. 15 and the league has said it will lock the players out if a new agreement isn't in place by then. Bettman says he's content to wait for that aforementioned response from the union, but declared that players shouldn't feel any ''entitlement'' to 57 percent of revenues.

Unlike the current CBA in which salaries are tied into revenues, the league's plan calls for the first three years to be separated from HRR. Also, HRR would be redefined in the final three years of the six-year CBA.

The cap ceiling would drop to $58 million for next season. It would rise to $60 million in 2013-14 and top out at a projected $71 million in 2017-18.

The league and players set the cap ceiling for the 2012-13 season at $70.2 million in a joint statement released in June.