I know that you've used the word opinion here twice, but there's really not much of an opinion when it comes to the lockout negotiations. They aren't happening, they are going to resume in the coming week(s), and they haven't budged much in the past six weeks, if not six months. Those are all facts, not opinion.
Before I answer the crux of your question, let me offer some insight into these talks, though:
-- First, reporters/journalists like me should not use the word "impasse" because the two sides won't until things are dire. That is a charged word when it comes to labor negotiations, and it means things are headed into a way worse realm of labor issues than the current one. Impasse has a legal definition, and if an impasse is declared then there is trouble ahead for the season. So we should avoid using that word so that it lands with the power it has when the two sides near it.
-- Second, these proposals from each side are not made a la carte. From what I've been told, from people on both sides of the table, there has been the proposals about different formats for a new economic structure. And some include lowering the free agent age. Some include rewriting the arbitration. Some include eliminating draft pick compensations, restructuring the draft, and so on. You can pluck favorable elements from various proposals and think -- wait, there is the outline of a deal here. The catch is that the proposals don't include all of those things at once. Look at the recent reports about how MLB wants to know what the union's priority is -- is it getting players paid more sooner in their career? is it reducing the appeal of tanking? is it restoring some of the lost ground for free agents? The answer of course is ... yes. Yes. Those are the priorities. You can see how MLB would want to identify one, make that proposal to keep a structure favorable in the other categories, and the union would want to go 3-for-3. To way oversimplify, the negotiations are stuck because both sides wants to go 2-for-3.
Now to your question, anything in baseball sure seems to take a deadline. The trade deadline spurs action that is not there in June. The expiration of the CBA prompted one of the exciting 72 hours in Hot Stove history. Deadlines prompt action. I speak from experience.
The real deadline is going to be in that March 1 area, as pitchers need time to get ready and neither side wants to lose games. The loss of regular season games is the real deadline, not the loss of some morning workouts on the back fields of Arizona or Florida.