NEW YORK — Manny Malhotra is spending his days in the boardroom instead of on the ice in North America or Europe.

The Vancouver Canucks forward joined the negotiating team of the NHL Players’ Association on Thursday for the second straight day of bargaining at the league office. The topics at hand again centered on secondary issues such as drug testing, contracts and other legal things, instead of talks about the core economics of the sport that is fueling the monthlong lockout.

“It’s at a crawl at this point, but we knew that coming in that it was going to be long,” Malhotra said.