Don Mclean once sang about the day that the music died, alluding to the death of Buddy Holly as the day in which music 'changed' forever, not for the better. I look at August 9, 1988 (our wedding anniversary no less...) as the day that hockey died. Since that day, for me, hockey has spiralled into a black hole of apathy. I have a really hard time caring about hockey any more.
Now that is not to say that I don't follow hockey. I still faithfully read each and every box score on a daily basis. In fact I read all box scores for every junior hockey game in Canada, as well as some American Hockey League games. That will never change for me. I love to look and see who has scored, when it occurred, how many shots there was on net, who got penalties, were there fights in the game and other stupid little facts that only a number geek like me would care about or even look at. I learned to read as a five year old, by pouring over the sports pages and in particular, the pages that had boxscores.
But since 'that day' I can honestly say that I have only watched perhaps 2-3 complete NHL hockey games. To sit and watch a whole game is painful. The game has changed so much since the eighties, and again, not for the better. But while saying that, I really miss having no hockey. It is a travesty that this situation has gotten to where it is.
You have a situation in which a 3.3 billion dollar industry has shut down, with no winner in sight. The players will lose, the owners will lose and most importantly the fans will lose. How can these idiots not have enough common sense to see that they have a golden goose, and they are fucking it up?. They play a fucking GAME. A GAME. They are not solving crime, or curing cancer, or solving financial and economic troubles though out the world. They play a fucking hockey game. They make money playing a game. They should get down on their hands and knees and thank God for their incredible fortune (no pun intended) of being able to earn an incredible living playing a fucking GAME. The owners should be right beside them, thankful that they make an obscene amounts of money on the fact that mindless drones continue to flock to their municipally financed arenas, to watch a GAME.
This is the third or fourth time that the union and the owners have gone to war over labor negotiations (who can keep count?). Now they are on the verge of the second nuclear winter, without hockey being played. Who is the constant in all of this? Your friend and mine... Gary 'Pocket Pool Playing' Bettman. Have you ever seen that little fucker without his hands in his pockets? Hmmmmm...?
All major sports have commissioners who are less than loved. Selig is not loved. Stern is not loved. Goodall is not loved. But Bettman is at a whole different level of hate. He can not go into any arena in the world without getting his ass booed mercilessly. It is fucking embarrassing. I hate Bettman and I am embarrassed for him. He either has the thickest skin in the world or is too stupid to know how much he is hated. Bettman stands there with that smirking, shit-eating grin pasted to his weasely face, oblivious to the severity of the venom being spewed upon him. Maybe he just sings to himself and pretends that they are saying Boo-tman (kind of like Monty Boo-urns in Simpsons). Bettman is on the verge of not only being the only commissioner in sports history to lose one whole season, but now cancelling a second season. What a fucking legacy.
And the process. WTF? It is December 14 and basically nothing has been done. They have had years and years to start, work on, and finish this deal, and two months after the season should have started, they are basically at first base. WTF have they been doing? Ohhhh, right. N-E-G-O-T-I-A-T-I-N-G. Kind of like Castanza negotiates. The clock is ticking and they are doing nothing. I really laughed last week when some rocket scientist decided have negotiations with just a few owners and a few players. No trained, professional negotiators allowed in the meeting. Talk about putting the lambs in with the wolves. Let's look at the dynamics of these two groups. On one hand you have the owners. Rich powerful men who mostly got rich running over less rich, people. They have gotten rich mainly thought their business acumen. They have had to plan, organize, oversee, negotiate and create fortunes. One would conclude that they are reasonably intelligent, with business skills. After all they are fucking million/billionaires. On the other hand you have a hockey player. Educated is not the first thing you think about when you envision a hockey player. A high percentage of the players in the NHL have not gotten a great education. Now that may not ensure or determine their intelligence, but it doesn't help. They grew up riding busses from Swift Current to Regina and I think it is safe to say they don't spend their time on the bus pouring over economic or financial journals.
So now they are going to put a wolf in with a lamb (an uneducated lamb, at that) and they are going to solve this complicated, many sided, complex labor negotiation. Are you fucking kidding me? How could that work? Zero chance. In fact a zero chance is so far down the fucking road, that you couldn't see it with the Hubble Telescope. Surprise, surprise it failed.
The owners are no walk in the park in this negotiation. They won the last labor battle with a fucking TKO in the first ten seconds of the fight. They crushed the union. They kicked the union's ass. And yet, seven years down the road, they still fucked it up. The owners can't help themselves. They put things in place to save the game, and then they fuck it up. The players don't go to the owners and hold a gun to their heads to pay them an obscene amount of money. The owners signed a salary cap and instantly began finding every way possible to circumvent the very rules THEY put in. They won the last union negotiation in every way possible and now they say the last labor deal is killing them. They made the rules and now the rules are killing them. Huh?
So now the owners are going to piss away another season to 'win' this labor fight. Many are losing less money not playing, than if they were playing. They basically don't care if there is hockey this year. They players want to win this time after the ass-kicking they took last time. Players are competitive and do not like ass-kickings. It is their nature. That is why they are professional athletes. So here we sit with our thumbs firmly stuck up our rear ends, waiting for these two fucking idiot groups to solve a problem that seems to be solvable through a little common sense.
I haven't even touched on Donald Fehr, who like his name, sends fear and loathing to the deepest part of each and every owner's soul. They hate him and want nothing to do with him. Which is funny as hell.
I could go on and on but what is the use? These morons will or will not solve this trivial problem. Perhaps there will be hockey or not. Who knows? The sad things is that the only control that the true hockey fan has over this situation is in the buying of tickets. Fans have the choice to buy tickets. However; we know from past experience that the hockey fan WILL FLOCK TO THE GAMES, as soon as the labor situation is over. You know they will. Hockey fans are put in a tough situation. To make a point, they could tell the team to fuck themselves and get their money back, cancelling they season tickets. By doing that, they run the risk that they will never get another opportunity to see an NHL hockey game in person ever again. Others will snap up the season tickets and they will be fucked. Most fans will not risk that situation, so they will continue paying their obscene prices, just to see hockey. They won't, not go to the games, to make a point because, after all; they have paid for the seats, so why not go. It is no win situation for the fan. They have waited and waited for 'the game' and now they are held hostage to pay big bucks for watered down talent, just to be able to see hockey; something they love with all their hearts. Talk about a kick to the gun-ions.
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