A Dallas Stars rebound could be in jeopardy if the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association can’t come to a consensus on a new collective bargaining agreement. The deadline is midnight Saturday.

If no agreement is reached, the league’s owners appear intent on locking out the players for the second time in less than 10 years. Stars president Jim Lites didn’t have much to say on the subject when asked about it during an appearance on the KERA program CEO.

“I can’t talk about it,” Lites said. “We’re under a gag order from the commissioner (Gary Bettman). I think they’re doing the right thing to get it done.”

The Stars gained some traction last season when ownership of the team was transferred from Tom Hicks to Tom Gagliardi, a Vancouver-based businessman. The Stars dropped prices on single-game tickets after Gagliardi took over, a move Lites said the team should have made after the 2004-05 lockout, which erased that season. The Stars made free-agent moves off the ice, acquiring two big names -- Jaromir Jagr and Ray Whitney. Both are 40, but both were effective last season.

Lites is hopeful he can grow the team’s season ticket base from 6,000 to 7,500 this season. But he can’t do that without a product on the ice.

At stake is how to divide a $3.3 billion pie and, as usual, there is dissension. Published reports have NHL owners asking players to accept less than 50 percent of league revenue for salaries and a rollback of current salaries by as much as 24 percent. The players’ association, led by former Major League Baseball Players’ Association executive director Donald Fehr, is seeking more revenue sharing to close the perceived chasm between large- and small-market teams without damaging the players’ current revenue cut of 57 percent.

The Dallas Stars are set to begin training camp later this month in Boise, Idaho, the home of one of their minor league affiliates, the Idaho Steelheads. The Stars also had planned an exhibition game against the Minnesota Wild on September 25, along with another neutral-site game on September 28 in San Antonio against the Florida Panthers. The Stars would then return to the American Airlines Center for the home exhibition debut against the Panthers on September 29 before opening the regular season on October 13 at Phoenix. But now that schedule is in jeopardy.

Once the lockout begins, players cannot use team facilities to train or get treatment for injuries. Owners and team personnel may not contact players for any reason. The longer a lockout continues, the more games the Stars could lose. For instance, during the NBA lockout last year, the season was reduced from 82 games to only 66. A similarly shortened season could be detrimental to the Stars’ overall recovery.

Lites told KERA that the reported $90 million the Stars lost over the past three years was “pretty accurate.” To begin to make up that ground, the Stars need to play and get a more favorable collective bargaining agreement.

“Some of that was the cost of bankruptcy,” Lites said. “Some of that is non-recurrent (debt). We have a lot of things to do. We look at it as a 10-10-10. What we need to generate is $10 million in local revenue, $10 million in relief from the CBA and $10 million in media. If we can do that, we’ll be successful.”