The National Lacrosse League announced today that negotiations with the Professional Lacrosse Players Association towards a new collective bargaining agreement have broken off, with no further talks scheduled.

Under normal circumstances, this is no big deal -- NLL and PLPA have always had an off-and-on record at the negotiating table.

It's different this time, though, as the league declared earlier this week that a new agreement will be in place by tomorrow or there will be no 2008 NLL season.

NLL imposed a similar deadline during the last collective bargaining talks, three years ago, with negotiations going right down to the wire.

"We are very disappointed to be sitting here on the eve of the deadline without an agreement with the players association," deputy commissioner George Daniel said. "We believe that the offer we've put on the table is agreeable to the vast majority of the players. Our offer reamins on the table until midnight on Monday."

The union has remained silent on today's development, but PLPA president Peter Schmitz, speaking recently with the Calgary Sun, acknowledged that the league's deadline is intended to move the talks off square one, but he also emphasized that the union will not be pressured into an agreement.

"We're not going to be forced into a deal that the players can't accept," Schmitz said. "Deadline or no deadline, the contract has to be good."

Little detail has emerged on what the two sides are seeking, aside from this -- the league offered a three-percent raise in player salaries as part of a five-year contract, while the union is countering with a proposed ten-percent hike and a much shorter contract length.

Stay tuned.