Perhaps a Canadian division within a new world league. I'd like to see a Winnipeg-MoDo final :)

Scrapping the NHL doesn't seem like such a bad idea. The whole idea of becoming an instant millionaire because of being born with athleticism, and conversely, owners charging exhorbitant prices to watch these guys, grates on a person who works 50plus hours a week just to feed a family and maybe get a couple weeks off during the year to go on a budgeted vacation. The same opinion could be given about the NBA, NFL, movie actors.........

Lower paying teams like Calgary, and Tampa Bay along with moderate payers like Vancouver and Minnesota were finally starting to dominate over the super wealthy teams like New York and Washington. In essence the game was sorting itself out at the end of last season. Even New York finally figured out that overpaid talent could not buy you victory, and dumped a ton of payroll at the season end. Just when things were starting to finally work the NHL shuts it all down. Very curious indeed.

Not to mention the rise of the Canadian dollar has given all Canadian teams a huge boost. After all, it was the woes of the dollar that teams were using as an excuse for government help.

The NHL and all the other sports leagues are simply providing bread and circuses. Anything to distract the masses from how badly they're being screwed by their corp/gov'ts. Which is more important: that you're being deprived of watching overpaid athletes, or that your gov't is using YOUR pension plan to invest in companies that make land mines? CPP vs NHL? Your choice defines your intelligence.

Hopefully they players and owners will keep this up for a few more years and we can kiss that stupid game goodbye.

Hopefully then we'll get rid of movies, plays, festivals, works of fiction etc that also have no value beyond entertainment and simply distract us.

They haven't been playing hockey this year????....

Typical left wing woe is me argument. These guys are playing thousand of miles from home for hundreds of thousand instead of millions just to say that they are hard done by. And Union zealots wonder why hundreds of people line up for their jobs. Sad

You found a "left-wing argument" in hockey?

The people who benefit are the fans and the real hockey players - your local hockey teams. Support your local hockey team, not some overpaid stuffed shirts playing hockey in places that have never even heard of ice. Frankly, I hope the NHL *stays* dead. It had long-since exceeded it's sell date.

Tell me, what industry, business, corporation ...has guaranteed "cost certainty"? The owners can@t skate, shoot, hit or score. their teams are all toys which they pay for from in most cases wealth that was passed down to them. They are like a bunch of spoiled kid`s who only now realized that with 30 teams many may never get a chance to own a winner. If any of their other(main) business ventures were/have lost as much as they claim hockey has cost them they would have simply sold. If you can`t stand the heat...You would think it would be easier for 30 owners to agree that they will not pay any new players more than "x" and any existing player more than "y" when negotiating contracts, that it will ever be to get 700 players to voluntarily accept less than they can get! The owners are acting just like the kid with the only puck at the community rink...who couldn`t skate, shot, hit or score. Too bad for the rest of us!

I think players need to start their own league. They should not accept a salary cap. Canadians should fight for their nationl sport. We take it lying down instead.

Bring Back Our Hockey Heroes
By: Angela St. Micheal

Canadians are terminally polite. So polite are Canadians that they are content to watch their
national past-time go bye-bye across the seas to Europe in a major “brawn drain”. I was born in
Scotland, just outside of Glasgow. As professional hockey players continue to be locked-out of the arenas in which they would normally play, comparatively in my mind I cannot help but
wonder what rioting would ensue in the streets of Glasgow, and the rest of Europe, if greedy
owners dared lockout professional soccer players. Those owners would be met in the streets of
Glasgow by the devoted folk of the Celtic and Ranger clubs, with a Glasgow kiss - a deadening
head butt.

Of course, there are those who will blame the players by accusing pro-athletes of being spoiled
or greedy, but these remarks, whether made by members of the media or by members of the
public at large, are born of jealousy for the talent players possess. The life of a NHL athlete is a great life, but not everyone has the talent, skill or heart to play at that level. Why is it so incredulous in a capitalist market economy to pay players in accordance to what they earn for their respective franchises?

Before the players can be blamed for the current lockout, it must be noted that bargaining was
opened up by the NHLPA in the 2003-2004 season by offering to take a 5 percent salary
rollback. The players’ union also agreed to a luxury tax on payrolls if owners agreed to
redistribute tax proceeds to small market teams as a form of revenue sharing, a practice greedy
NHL owners shun. NHL negotiator and the godfather of salary caps, Gary Betteman, is
mandated by the NHL to not accept anything less than a hard salary cap for players. A salary cap
is unconstitutional and should not be accepted by the players under any circumstances. A salary
cap would be a step backward for NHL players who have suffered a long history of manipulation
at the hands of greedy owners. Owners treat players like property, and a player deserves to chart the course of his own destiny.

In other professions, a candidate is free to negotiate the highest salary available based on talent. Why should professional hockey players be exempt from such a privilege in a free market
economy when they bring in millions of dollars in revenue annually for their franchises?
Hockey legend, Gordie Howe, was cheated by the lucrative Red Wings organization for the bulk
of his career. Though he was the top scorer in the NHL for six years in the 1950s in
Hockeytown, USA, by the time he had been playing in the league for nineteen years, Mr. Hockey
was still only earning $45,000 a year. The Red Wings organization was one of the most
profitable franchises in the league largely due to Howe’s popularity with the fans, but Howe
didn’t share in the owners’ huge profits. LA Kings’ owner, Bruce McNall paid Gretzky in
excess of $20 million during his years with LA, but he sold the Kings’ franchise for $311
million. Was Gretzky not in fact, responsible for the lucrative turn McNall’s franchise took?
McNall reported a $4 million deficit the year before Gretzky arrived to play for the Kings’
organization, and a $13 million profit at the close of the first year Gretzky played in LA.

Sadly, it is not the owners who do right by the players, but the players themselves who garner the
integrity of the sport. In the 2001-2002 season, Brendan Shanahan, Steve Yzerman and Chris
Chelios, each deferred $500,000 of their own salaries to the tune of $1.5 million, to sign free
agent Brett Hull at $9.3 million for two years. Remarkably, Hull is one player who has cried that
“some” players are overpaid for what they contribute. Presumably he doesn’t feel he is one of them, though it was his fellow players who topped up his salary as a free-agent.

Professional athletes should not be exempt from the economic rule of supply and demand merely
because they have a talent few mortals possess. Players earn what they do because they possess
a unique talent that entitles them to participate in a billion dollar industry. Their careers might
be limited by time in a sport where one check could end a career, bringing years of discipline,
dedication and dreaming to a gut-wrenching halt. NHL players are entitled to earn a substantial
salary, and NHL owners who plead poverty while hiding revenues, are not to be believed nor
trusted.

The Stanley Cup cost Governor General Lord Stanley $48.67 in 1893, and he donated it for
amateur contenders in Canada. In 1915, US competitors were permitted to also compete for the
Stanley Cup. The NHL does not own the Stanley Cup; it belongs to Canadians. It might be time
for the players to form their own league as they were poised to do after the 1994-95 lockout, and
compete for the Stanley Cup in the spirit that was initially intended by Lord Stanley who loved
the purity of the sport. I would rather see that than have our hockey heroes leave for Europe.

Will Canadians continue to stand idly by as their national sport and athletic heroes are taken
from them by the greed of owners? Or will we fight for what belongs to us as Canadians? If an
agreement has not been negotiated before February 24, 2005, I propose that on that day - the
anniversary of the day Team Canada won the gold medal against Team USA in 2002 - Canadians peacefully take to the streets across the nation, to demand that NHL owners negotiate to bring our hometown hockey heroes back to work. The Canadian winter is long and cold, and without hockey, the Canadian winter is unbearable.

Mr. Bettman, purveyor of the robber barons’ salary caps, and Mr. Goodenow, protector of our
players’ rights, please bring back our hockey; please bring back our heroes.