NHL

Dubinsky talks still on ice

Brandon Dubinsky is fewer than 24 hours away from missing the first day of John Tortorella’s first training camp as head coach of the Rangers.

This would probably not be the ideal way to go about auditioning for the role as Marian Gaborik’s center.

Dubinsky, a 23-year-old Group II free agent pivot, remains unsigned following face-to-face discussions yesterday between general manager Glen Sather, assistant GM Cam Hope and Dubinsky’s representative, Kurt Overhardt, who flew to New York on Wednesday from his home base in Colorado.

Camp opens tomorrow with a 7 a.m. meeting, which will be followed by a number of rigorous conditioning exercises, including a three-mile run for which most of the athletes have been preparing for nearly a month. It is inconceivable that the Rangers would invite Dubinsky to camp without a signed contract and allow him to practice with the team when he theoretically could receive an offer sheet at any moment.

The contract situation is the same as it has been for weeks. The Rangers have their one-year qualifying offer of $522,500 on the table to Dubinsky that represents nearly an 18-percent cut in pay from last year, when he earned $635,000, including Entry Level bonuses.

The Blueshirts also have offered various multi-year deals, but they all fall substantially short of what Dubinsky would be able to command next summer coming off a productive season. A 55-60 point year — hardly a stretch to expect as Gaborik’s linemate — would almost certainly bump Dubinsky to $3M per in arbitration.

Unless a team loses a center to long-term injury early in camp, an offer sheet is unlikely to emerge at this late date. The Maple Leafs have both a need and affection for Dubinsky, but the chances of Toronto GM Brian Burke blindsiding his good friend Sather are more remote than Dubinsky’s home state of Alaska.

The question essentially is whether Sather will relent on the one-year pay cut and offer Dubinsky the same $1M (or thereabout) the team will pay Patrick Rissmiller to likely play a second consecutive season in Hartford.

If not, Dubinsky will have to decide how wise it would be to be marked absent on Tortorella’s first day.

larry.brooks@nypost.com