SAN JOSE, Calif. – Veteran players with their seven-figure salaries were advised more than three years ago to stash away money for the darkness that is this NHL season. Rookies making a fraction of that had less time to create a lockout cushion.

So it makes sense that Sharks forward Niko Dimitrakos was among the first to take advantage of the NHL Players Association’s offer this week of a $10,000 stipend, the first of what could be 24 monthly checks that players can count on.

Dimitrakos earned $450,000 in his first full NHL season and was scheduled to make the same this year. Nice money, of course, but the bottom of the NHL pay scale. He didn’t hesitate to sign up online to tap into the fund.

“It’s going to help pay the bills,” said Dimitrakos, who noted that it will go a lot further in Maine, where he’s now renting a house on a lake, than it would in San Jose. “There’s no fancy shopping there.”

The checks won’t be for $10,000 every month, dropping to $5,000 at times. And each player gets the same amount regardless of NHL experience or past earnings.

Shortly after the owners began contributing $10 million each to a $300 million strike fund, the NHLPA established its own pool using union dues and licensing revenue.

Dimitrakos, who spent the holiday weekend in Chicago with his girlfriend’s family, is living in Maine so he can skate regularly with the Black Bears.

his former college team in Orono.

He’s also following the dispute between the NHL and Forbes magazine, which said the league is losing less than half the money it claims – and gets to the heart of what divides players and owners.

“We don’t trust the numbers we’re given,” Dimitrakos said. “For the NHL to say that Forbes is wrong…why would Forbes lie?”

NO ONE’S TALKING: The two sides haven’t talked to each other across a negotiating table since Sept.9, but they will be chatting more among themselves in the coming weeks.

The NHL invited all 30 general managers to New York for dinner with Commissioner Gary Bettman on Thursday. That news generated speculation that Bettman would provide the drop-dead deadline before the entire season would have to be canceled.

Nonsense, said the NHL’s chief negotiator, Bill Daly.

“It’s not true at all,” he said. “There is no formal agenda at all.”

NOT GONNA TAKE IT: As he dines with Bettman, Edmonton G.M. Kevin Lowe can expect an atta-boy or two from the league for his threat to resign if a new collective bargaining agreement doesn’t do enough to make the Oilers situation more bearable.

“I would not do this job for another four years under what I just went through the last four years,” Lowe told the Edmonton Journal. “It was too difficult – too difficult emotionally, spiritually, psychologically.”

The NHLPA is putting together its own meeting in December and expects between 200 and 300 players to show up, not just the union reps who were in Toronto on Nov. 2.

THIS AND THAT: If you want to cling to the hope that the NHL can salvage this season, there were reports this week that the NHLPA was sweetening its September proposal in hopes of kick-starting negotiations. One suggested a luxury tax of 75 cents for every payroll dollar above a threshold as low as $40 million, for example.

If you prefer to think it’s hopeless, note that the NHLPA immediately denied it was doing any such thing. And even if it were, owners have not budged from their hard line on cost certainty.