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Since I haven't been following this, who's the bad guy: the NHL Owners or the NHL Players? (My default position in these ultra-rich labor disputes is to blame both sides.)

Both, at times. If you assume the owners are on the up-and-up with regards to finances, then they're probably as close as you can get to the "good guys" in this.

who's the bad guy:

When four of the teams are bankrupt, and even the teams with full arenas are losing money (like Dallas) unless they get deep into the playoffs, the salary structure is too high.

But, as you indicated, both sides are too blame. The owners don't have the discipline to keep salary offers down to an economically viable level. You can understand that. If adding a million dollars to a $60 million payroll makes the difference between elimination and a Stanley Cup, you might as well go for it. And then there's the next million (because Team X just added a million to their payroll) and so on. So the owners wanted a salary cap, fixed between 52% and 54% of total team revenue, instead of now where player salaries are as much as 75% of total team revenue.

The players feel they've been fair because they've offered to take cuts in pay that bring the total for player salaries down to the viable range, but they absolutely refuse a salary cap (though all the other major sports have them) because they know the bidding wars will start up as soon as the new contract is in place.

My own solution would be true revenue sharing - as in Moby Dick. Each player would negotiate a share of the team revenues. If the team makes a lot of money, they get a lot of money. If they team only makes a little money, then the players don't get much either.

Unfortunately, that would continue the concentration of better players into the high-paying markets, and most areas of the US would no longer be able to field competitive teams (and Canada would be out of it entirely). So I can certainly understand why the league is looking for a cap instead.

Overall, in this case, the players are probably closer to being the 'bad guys.' They have no obligation to make money for the owners. But if they owners are losing enough money to shut down the league, they've gone over the line.