NHL

NHL owners take it to court

The fourth month of NHL Owners’ Lockout III begins at midnight tonight with the league taking the increasingly bitter battle to the courts, launching another time-consuming gyration.

The NHL reacted with lawsuits to the news the players plan to vote next week on authorizing the possible end of the role of the Players’ Association as negotiator in bargaining, which would then permit the filing of antitrust charges against the league.

The NHL yesterday filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan, seeking to confirm the legality of the lockout, and also an “unfair labor practice” charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the Players’ Association.

In its NLRB filing, the league claims the union’s vote, which was to be conducted in the coming week, would represent an “unlawful subversion of the collective bargaining process,” and would “constitute bad faith bargaining,” by the PA.

The union responded by claiming the league “appears to be arguing that players should be stopped from even considering their right to decide whether or not to be represented by a union,” the PA said in a statement.

The players’ vote would be mainly symbolic, but in the way a skull and crossbones is symbolic. The NHL players are tacitly threatening the poison pill that would kill off the rest of this unplayed season.

The union’s executive committee Thursday night approved the call for a vote, even though it may not need a vote to issue a disclaimer of interest, which would mean the union does not intend to further represent the players as the agent of collective bargaining. A disclaimer of interest is an alternative to a decertification of the union, in which the players would renounce the union as their representative — two paths to the same destination.

If the union stops representing the players, the league may be entitled to start the season using replacement players.

Restarting a union would likely be a lengthy and cumbersome task for the players.

The players are expected to overwhelmingly authorize the disclaimer of interest, but their vote would not require the union to then take that first step towards dissolution. Rather it would be the big stick carried behind the union’s back to nudge the league off its take-it-or-leave-it stance. Dissolution remains the league’s strongest tactic in a giveback negotiation in which it has held scant leverage, confirmed by the speed with which the league went to court.

mark.everson@nypost.com