Everyone is aware of how the NHL publicized its $42.5M cap offer to the PA on the Eve of the 2004-05 season’s Destruction.

Until now, however, the NHL was able to use confidentiality agreements to cloak the accurate meaning of that number, just as the league has utilized similar agreements to mislead individual players and agents – let alone the public and the media – for more than two years.

The Post has learned that the league’s offer of a $42.5M team ceiling – that would have included a 50-percent tax beginning at $36M – featured the following elements that the NHL did not release to the public when it plastered the proposal on its various web sites:

All annual individual signing bonuses contained in contracts.

All personal achievement bonus payouts.

All contract buyouts.

All annual signing bonuses for players in Entry Level System.

All players on Injured Reserve.

All players in minor leagues earning over $75,000.

As such, the PA computes the actual NHL-roster cap number as approximately $39M per team – if not less – under the last proposal.

But of course, selective disclosure has been a hallmark of the NHL’s PR campaign and approach to negotiating with the union, beginning as far back as two years ago when the league publicly berated the PA for failing to open negotiations – even as the parties met a dozen times over the second half of the 2002-03 season while bound by confidentiality agreements to keep the meetings secret.

“They’ve made us look bad all along by deceiving the public as to what they’ve been offering; they’ve managed to confuse a lot of individual players who haven’t been directly involved in the negotiating process,” one prominent player, who learned of the proposal’s details at the PA’s meetings in Toronto on Monday and Tuesday, told The Post.

“But no more. They’re not going to get to hide behind confidentiality agreements anymore.”