Its Official: NHL Season is cancelled

[Cush]

just annouced

[Feathered Fish]

1. meh

They'll be lucky if they can sell out an arena whenever they return. What a bunch of drips.

[Ravenseye]

8. They were lucky to sell out before this

I'm very depressed at how idiotic this 'negotiation' was. Both sides are at fault, but I blame the players more.

[Teaser]

2. The end of hockey.

Oh well. Somewhere, someone probably cares.

[tridim]

6. I care.. My friend had a great idea the other day

Let Canada take over the NHL. They could just say.. If you (America) want to join our league, you must play by our rules.

[Ravenseye]

16. Toronto is part of the problem

I'm sorry but I think this is a bad idea. Even if you got more teams to come back and put teams back in Winnipeg and Quebec City, and added more in Halifax or Hamilton or wherever....it'd be the same schtick or worse.

Without salary controls the Maple Leafs would own the league. What fun is that?

I say dump the canadian teams. The problem is that their labor agreements differ province to province and make it a nightmare to have replacement players to break the players union.

Yes I'm liberal and I want to break a union. Imagine if a Steelworkers Union refused to work, and you couldn't hire other people, unless they got 75% of all the money coming into the business. The company would lose money year after year. They'd try and negotiate a new contract and if the Steelworkers refused the way the NHLPA had they'd go out of business and close the factory, or close it and move their factory to Mexico. Can't do that with hockey.

Oh yeah. The average player salary of the NHL is what...1.3 million or so? If the minimum salary in a union is over 200k I feel no pity for them, especially if they're sucking the business dry.

[Rican1]

29. I disagree

The hockey players didn't refuse to work- They were locked out. No one put a gun to management's head and forced them to pay those kind of salaries. It's not the players fault that the owners can't police themselves. I know its hard to pick sides when millionaires are fighting billionaires but I'm with the players.

[Ravenseye]

A Salary Cap is the Owners policing themselves though

The only way the owners can police themselves is through methods like salary caps and linking revenues with salaries. That's sort of the whole point. How else are they to police themselves?

One billionare owner who couldn't care less about losing money on his toy screws up the rest of the league. Not only do teams lose good players to these few sandbox teams but other teams have to pay higher salaries when they are awarded simliar salaries in abritration. So even if 29 owners are fiscally sane, one can screw up everything simply because of the arbitration factor.

More teams the past few years have just refused to pay those salaries and dumped players. People think the Penguins are a weak franchise but they lost the least amount of money last year of the 17 teams that in fact did lose money.

I disagree though that the players 'refused to work'. Yes they were locked out, but they were locked out because they didn't want any kind of salary controls that would bring sanity to the league.

I agree though, it's hard to pick sides when millionares are fighting billionares, but I gotta side with the owners on this one. They want a reasonable system that insures a better fiscal health for all teams, and allows every team to be competitive.

[Telly Savalas]

37. Without salary controls, it's the NY Rangers that would own the league...

and they still wouldn't make the damn playoffs.

Dumping Canadian teams is completely against the spirit of the game and the league. The nation which the word "National" in National Hockey League refers to isn't the United States, ya know.

[Ravenseye]

38. So the fact the 2/3rds of the 'orginal six' are U.S. teams

that doesn't matter at all I guess.

I'm sick of Candians acting like Americans don't deserve hockey or something. Just because it's not as big here as in Canada doesn't mean that we don't have a ton of fans here.

[Telly Savalas]

40. But the original six aren't truly the originals.

When the NHL was founded, the teams were all Canadian. (see Wikipedia's article on the NHL) So call me fucking nutty, but that leads me to believe that the word "national" refers to Canada.

Nobody's saying Americans don't deserve hockey. You're the one saying the NHL should abandon Canada.

Furthermore, I'm an American.

[LisaM]

7. A lot of people care. That's kind of a snotty comment

No one is making you be on the sports forum.

[Teaser]

9. Nope. The National Hockey League deserved to die.

It has not adapted at all to the modern sports situation. They need a salary cap. That the players would drive it to the edge of extinction in order to prevent the institute of a realistic cap, and then the commissioner and owners decide they want to drive over the edge of extinction, since they 've come so close...this is not a rational business decision.

There's still minor league hockey and european hockey. They are better sports anyway.

[LisaM]

14. Well the players did agree to a major cut and offered a cap

but it's the owners who drove up the salaries in the first place, and Bettman is responsible for the expansion (which real hockey fans decried at the time), moving teams out of Canada, and betting the farm on short-term TV contracts. Bettman was a failed NBA guy who had no business in hockey.

Hockey is a true fan's game - you are right by the ice, play is fast and there are few breaks, there are no trashy looking cheerleaders, and it's just a great game to watch. I watch college hockey when I can, and some international hockey, but nothing beats the NHL.

[Teaser]

19. The players offered a cap, but...

at the 11th hour (and it's been the 11th hour for the last few months, really). The owners and Bettman get most of the blame, sure, but the players aren't guiltless.

Really, though, I think the NHL has become dreadfully boring in the last 10 years. It's hard to sit through the games anymore. Some rules need to change if hockey wants to be a viable and popular sport.

[LisaM]

22. They need to get rid of the trap, agreed

but in the meantime, do you see the owners agreeing to revenue sharing and a limit on THEIR profits? I agree that the star salaries are out of control (as they are in all the entertainment industries, including the movie and music industries.) But sports owners as a whole are often selfish, egotistical businessmen from other fields, who either enter a sport they know nothing about or are buying the team to sell it later for a profit or take a tax break. You will never get me to feel bad for people who own sports teams.

If they would let the Green Bay Packers model be the boilerplate - community ownership of teams - it would be a lot better thing.

[Ravenseye]

25. 1000% agree on community ownership

Have it tied to the area. Thing is would the Green Bay Packers be there without the current NFL CBA? What if they hadn't been competetive in 10 years and would have no chance in the future?

the thing is...I do see the owners agreeing to revenue sharing, and not only a limit on their profits, but to have profit sharing with the players. The fact is that the majority of the teams lost money last year, and while most of them can afford to as billionare toys, a number of other ones can't. I don't feel bad for the owners, but I do undersatnd what they're trying to say.

Just because they have money and buy a sports team, doesn't mean it should eat away millions and millions of dollars a year into their other holdings. That's just unreasonable. Sure they use it for tax purposes sometimes, but still. I don't hold it against someone to demand to be able to make a profit in something you paid over 200 million dollars for.

[LisaM]

27. But anyone with half a brain could see teams in the South were stupid

They tried to glam it up and the owners were happy to go along for the ride. Real hockey fans complained at the time when teams not only started leaving Canada but started going to stupid places like Atlanta and Carolina. It's greed that takes a team from Minneapolis to Dallas - and then someone is allowed to bring a new team back into Minneapolis, with no concern for the fans in the meantime. Baseball is screwed up too but you don't see cities actually losing franchises for the most part (Montreal being the only recent exception.) Yet in the NBA and the NHL, they are bouncing all over the place.

[Ravenseye]

30. Like the Utah Jazz?

God knows why they didn't change that team name...

Yeah I think alot of the southern expansion was...well lets say hasty. Some places it's definately catching on. Nashville is suprisingly doing well, and Dallas has always been pretty good fan wise.

I think Atlanta, Carolina, and Phoenix were iffy decisions. Moving teams from Harford, and Winipeg were mistakes imho.

I think you'll see the problem more in baseball in the near future. The biggest problem for Baseball is there aren't a ton of places a team can move to and feel they'd do better than in their current location.

Still. Atlanta made a profit last year and were growing. I don't think expansion was a mistake necessarily. I do think though that they sacrified sanity on other issues when doing so, hoping that expansion would iron out the wrinkles. It didn't. Now we're fucked.

[Ravenseye]

17. Better Sports for You Maybe

but I prefer NHL hockey, thank you very much. Just because you don't care for hockey doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve to live which is sort of what you're implying.

The NHL tried to get a salary cap in 94 but failed. They had options to try and break it in 97 and 99 but didn't want to because of expansion and the olympics. They hoped the sport would grow and solve the problems.

Well it grew, from 400 million in 93 to over 2 billion last year. Not to shabby. The problem was the CBA wasn't ironed over like they hoped. So now they try and put in a salary cap.

The players weren't being rational but I think the NHL was being as best they could.

[jakefrep]

35. The NHL hasn't died.

It's in an extended period of self-inflicted dormancy, but I fully expect it to return.

[Ravenseye]

10. I Care

This has really upset me. I love hockey and hockey season. It really depresses me that there won't be any this year. No i'm not going to go slit my wrists or anything. i'll probably be over it later today or tommorow but only because I'll finally put it out of my mind.

[1gobluedem]

20. I care. I care a lot.

Hockey is one of the best sports to watch just for the skill alone (I'm not a fight fan). No prolonged TV timeouts, no endless TOs at the end of the game (like basketball), and pure athletic skill. Let's see how Terrell Owens does skating backwards with a puck zooming at him at 90 mph. Or Kobe Bryant when he's slammed into the boards.

Cities like Detroit are suffering enormously from this situation. Red Wing hockey fans contributed enormously to the local economy, not just in bars but also staying in the hotels, shopping, and even visited the damn casinos.

I've missed hockey all season and I'm going to miss it even more now. My winter and spring aren't the same.

You don't have to like hockey but that's no reason to disparage those who do. I don't like baseball so I don't contribute to baseball threads.

Damn you, Bettman.

[Deja Q]

3. Local news has aready had 'stories' on how local

businesses bars ave lost money because of this.

I can only guess that, when the time comes, the MN state media will use this NHL nonsense as a reason for taxpayers to pay for the new Vikings stadium that far fewer people would use. :eyes:

[mattclearing]

4. I guess the Crapitals will be spared another choking.

Gotta look on the bright side.

[Ravenseye]

12. Hmm....Bright side eh?

I don't have to watch a team with triple the payroll of my team walk all over them.

[Cush]

18. Caps were counting on a year long lockout

gives all of their young guys another year to develop without having to be rushed into the NHL

[Telly Savalas]

31. But what about those of us who root for teams that occasionally win?

[Burma Jones]

5. So I suppose Arena Football benefits.................

That's OK by me. Hockey seemed to expand too much too fast anyway.

[xultar]

11. :cry:

:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:
I really love hockey. So I guess I have to start watching the farm team games to get my fill.

:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:

[Ravenseye]

13. Not the Same

I've tried watching college hockey and AHL games when they were on. I just can't get into them. It's not the same. I don't miss 'the game' as much as the league itself.

Sorta like if the NFL canceled the season I'd miss watching the Steelers but NFL Europe games just wouldn't compensate for it, possibly they'd make it worse.

[xultar]

15. I know it's like methadone to a junkey but maybe it will help.

We have the Gladiators...http://www.gwinnettgladiators.com/Gwinnett/

I will get to see more live games. The arena is about 10 miles from my house!!!

[Oreo]

21. Bring on the WHA

The NHL has no right to survive now.

http://www.worldhockeyassociation.net/

It'd be great if the WHA started up and all the players moved over. The NHL would be filled with scrubs. I just hope the NHL doesn't have licensing rights to the Stanley Cup. If they did fold I'm sure they wouldn't pass the Cup.

Thanks Gary... you weasel!

[Ravenseye]

23. I'd be pissed at the players

Refusing a salary cap and then moving to the WHA with an even lower salary cap. EVERYTHING they were standing against the NHL for is in the WHA. If they move there, they're bastards.

[Oreo]

28. Right now I think the players are pissed at their union

A lot of players are already saying they're pissed for them accepting any cap at all.

Don't expect the loyalty to be so tight after today

[Telly Savalas]

24. May the whole lot of them burn in hell.

They dick around until mid-February before either side make any real concessions, then once they're in striking range of a deal both sides ass out and the season gets cancelled. Fuck them all.

[Ravenseye]

26. Seriously

Sometimes you just have to take the two sides, lock them in a room and say...you're not coming out until there is hockey. EVen if that means for 2 weeks they sit there not talking to each other.

They just didn't even bother most of the time, played a waiting game, tried to bluff, and finally just didn't work it out.

Just dumb.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[KamaAina]

39. Yes! Grovelbot for NHL commissioner!!

We don't need no stinkin' salary cap! We've got the mighty Grovelbot!

Sure, I know s/he's a robot. But seriously, could s/he possibly be any worse? S/he probably has never seen a hockey game, but neither had Bettman...

[Oreo]

33. Players are PISSED

Darren Pang on ESPN just said a high profile player said the NHLPA "sold them down the river".

Don't look for the NHLPA loyalty to last very long.

If the league brings in scrubs next year... I think a lot of players will cross the line.

[MrSlayer]

34. Fuck You Gary Bettman. They should fire his ass right now.

What a piece of shit this guy is. Since the second he took over the game has been in decline. No scoring, the trap, expansion, stupid rules and totally inept leadership. I hate that scroungy little fuck with every fiber of my being. He has been a complete disaster for the game and the worst commissioner of any sport ever. Die Bettman! Die!

[kick-ass-bob]

36. There was a story in my local paper about Bettman

"Blame Bettman for NHL's nuclear winter" - Ned Barnett.

its at newsobserver.com, but it apparently requires registration online.
Rips Bettman for what he's done to the NHL.