GAME OFF!!!!!!!

Like that’s a big surprise.

Have a nice off-season, hockey fans. see you in October. Maybe.

I will ask this rhetorical question to fans arguing that the owners are lying about how much money they’re losing: if the owners really WERE lying, why didn’t they take any of the offers the players made? If the finances weren’t as bad as the league’s been claiming all along, then many of the deals they forced out of the players would have looked like gravy.

The San Jose Sharks, for what it’s worth, claim they lost $6 million last year, including the revenues generated by going to the Division championship series. And their salary structure is one of the saner ones in the league, to boot.

The owners, IMHO, aren’t doing this to get rich, it’s because they’re tired of going bankrupt. Fans who don’t want to believe this are fooling themselves, and the union did itself a world of hurt by following that path as well. the NHLPA is now fractured and in serious trouble, with internal divisions that will likely take years to fix, if they ever do. it’s power as a unified force is clearly broken.

And lest you think I’m purely an owner butt-kisser, one area I’m extremely disappointed in the owners is the lack of any rational discussion of two issues: revenue sharing and buying out non-viable franchises. Part of the problem here is not a LACK of money, but of a disparity of income between teams, and the NHL hasn’t made any real effort to deal with that part of the problem. The league also has clearly over-expanded, and there are some franchises that the league would be better off without. Buying out franchises also improves the revenue sharing issue, because shared revenues would be split into fewer, larger pieces.

I was never a huge fan of a shortened season, but unlike many fans, I really wanted ot see this solved, even if it meant a 25 game asterisk year — because now, an even worse situation is upon us: the pressure is off to FINISH this deal, as close as they are, and so we’re at risk at not only being forced to watch this fiasco continue into the summer, but it may stretch into next season as well, and I’d rather have ONE asterisk season than two, or many. And that’s now a legitimate risk. Wouldn’t you rather be able to head into summer knowing that next October, opening night will happen as scheduled? we don’t have that guarantee now.

And that sucks.

For those complaining that the two sides should have found a middle ground: you’re right, and you’re wrong. The owners made it clear from the beginning that they wanted certain things in the agreement, and they’ve kept to that consistently. labor negotiations aren’t rational (or necessarily mature) — they’re a huge game of chicken, with both sides holding out and trying to make the other side blink. Ultimately, this cancellation of the season has to be blamed on the union, because the union started blinking, and once it did, it was all over but the shouting. That last round, however, the NHLPA decided it was close enough that the league would have to “come over” and toss the final bone back at the union, allow it to save face.

the union guessed wrong, and the league called the season. The union, in a last ditch effort to claim SOME kind of victory (because, basically, at the end of it, they gave the owners pretty much everything they’d been demanding all along, and that the union said they’d never do) drew a line in the sand when they had no power left, and then got left to watch the tide sweep it away with millions of dollars of player salaries. that miscalculation cost the union big time — and it’s an indication of how badly the league wanted to crush the union’s power as well. And it did.

In a game of five card stud, you can’t fold them by throwing down four cards and expect to keep the fifth. the union tried, and it cost it’s members 25 games in salary. that’s a lesson the players won’t soon forget, and they shouldn’t blame the owners, they should blame themselves and their leaders. Once they caved from their primary position (‘no salary cap ever’), the union basically lost all negotiating power, and should have realized it was time to throw in the last card and get back to playing hockey.

Now, it’s too late.

If I were a player, I’d have Goodenow’s head, today. And I’d find someone to agree to the last NHL deal, so I’d know that come october, I’d have a job. If they don’t do that, god knows when we’ll get a deal and a season.

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