The lockout and the damage done
NEW YORK -- And so the National Hockey League will have hockey after all.
Not sure whether to laugh, cry or just throw up at the absurdity of it all as the two sides emerged early Sunday morning from a 16-hour overnight bargaining session that yielded a tentative 10-year deal that will see players return for a 48- or 50-game schedule sometime in the next two weeks.
This much we know: It's going to take a lot more than a couple of lame words of contrition painted on NHL rinks to get fans to forget this titanic display of greed and stubbornness.
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Seven years ago, there was an entire season to make up for at the end of the last lockout, but there was also a new game to trumpet, new rules, promises of a faster, more dynamic product on the ice, new players in Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin on whom to pin the hopes of a league fresh from another flirtation with self-destruction.
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Another study of fan preference obtained by ESPN.com showed that compared to other sports fans in the United States, hockey fans believed fervently that the best days were ahead of the NHL. Among fans defined as "avid," 86 percent believed that to be true while 74 percent of fans designated as "casual" believed the future was bright for the league. By comparison, 77 percent of avid football fans felt that way about the NFL and only 25 percent of NBA fans felt that basketball's best days were ahead of it.
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http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/8817964/nhl-lockout-but-damage-done-irreparable
This is a very long and very good article about the state of the NHL. Too many good parts to post here.
