Maybe this will be the trigger that engages, educates and mobilizes the NHLPA membership.

Maybe Sixth Avenue’s latest reach into the players’ pockets with its attempt to coerce the union into extending the CBA by three years in exchange for authorization to compete in the 2018 Olympic Games will unify a Players Association that has been demoralized since enemies within undermined Bob Goodenow’s righteous fight against imposition of a hard cap through Owners’ Lockout II that claimed the 2004-05 season.

Out of nowhere — or perhaps, more accurately, out of Gary Bettman and the Board of Governors’ playbook — came the demand last week of linkage between the CBA and the Olympics. It was a classic hardball maneuver from the league that previously cast its reluctance (if not downright opposition) to commit to South Korea, over the IOC’s refusal to cover the cost of the players’ insurance and travel to the Games as it had done previously.

But when International Ice Hockey Federation chairman Rene Fassel on Wednesday informed Bettman that his organization would find the necessary $10 million to cover the cost, the league pulled its bait-and-switch. Suddenly, that wasn’t good enough.

Nope, the revenue in which the NHL is interested isn’t the money from the IIHF or the IOC, but the cash from escrow that pours in every season through deductions from the players’ checks.

The players are angry, my friends, like old men trying to send back soup in a deli. Simmering for years over escrow that has taken a bite of about 15 percent of salaries the past couple of seasons and with no expectation that equation will change dramatically for the better in the foreseeable future, they are now furious the NHL will relent on the Olympics only if they agree to add three years to the current labor agreement that runs through 2021-22 but on which both parties can opt out following 2019-20.

Agree, that is, to accept three more years of uncapped escrow just like that.

“Playing for your national team is always a great opportunity and playing in the Olympics is a great way for us to help grow the game,” Rangers player rep Derek Stepan, a member of Team USA for the 2014 Sochi Games, told Slap Shots on Friday. “We still don’t know whether this is supposed to be take-it-or-leave-it or whether there is room for negotiation, where there is give-and-take.

“We’ve started to discuss it among ourselves here and we’re going to have conference calls with the union to talk about it, but personally, I don’t think it makes any sense to extend the CBA three years to play in the Olympics.”

From our sampling and responses from myriad sources, Stepan’s is the prevailing opinion. Indeed, one well connected individual told Slap Shots on Saturday “it will not take long for us to get back to them on this one.” Indeed, the PA is expected to inform Bettman of its decision before the Board of Governors meeting in Palm Beach, Fla., that commences Dec. 8.

The NHL also proposed an ambitious international menu including a commitment to another World Cup, a Ryder Cup-style event that was initially suggested by the PA and a return to scheduling regular season games in Europe (and perhaps in Asia) if the players extend the CBA.

Let that sink in for a minute. The NHL will commit to growing the game and generating new revenue streams only if the owners are guaranteed an unending stream of revenue out of the players’ paycheck. There is no commitment on Sixth Avenue to expand its reach beyond reaching into the players’ pockets.

It is the players who want to grow the game. It is the players — and the best players, essentially the same players — who will carry the burden of playing these extra games and special events and put their battered bodies on the line again and again. The NHL believes the players should pay for this privilege.

By the way, here’s one: You know those transition (make-whole) payments out of Owners’ Lockout III in 2012-13? The third and final installment recently was delivered. And not only were the players obviously taxed on their own income, Slap Shots has learned the players were dunned for the cost of their employers’ payroll taxes. The players! The employees! What a gravy train they’ve got going at NHL headquarters.

“To me, it sounds like they’re pretty happy at the league with what they have,” Henrik Lundqvist said. “Doesn’t it?”

There certainly is no guarantee the NHLPA will be able to negotiate the type of 10 percent escrow cap under which their NBA brethren operate, whether the players opt out following 2019-20 or allow the current agreement after 2021-22. Fact is, the union might wind up forced to agree to give-backs in the next round, just as it has while locked out the last two times.

That is a risk several players acknowledged in conversations the last couple of days but seemed willing to accept. The union, for the first time this generation, seems galvanized.

There is this, too. With the NHL having announced its willingness to let the CBA ride through 2024-25, how could Bettman and the owners possibly explain an opt-out and an Owners’ Lockout IV in 2020? How?

It would, some might say, be an Olympian task.