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frankgrimes and sleepwalker - please kindly point out where it was in Ami's post that he demonstated a "hate" for unions? I don't see it. How about you address the specific items he mentioned instead of fallaciously dismissing his whole argument arbitrarily. It is also fallacious to dismiss his current arguments based on a past post (deleted post) that you are not even able to reference. At any rate, it sounded to me like he was sensibly responding to the union question... which is a valid discussion since we certainly would not be looking at a lockout if it weren't for the NHLPA. That is not to say the NHLPA is relevant or irrelevant, just that the presence of a union forces a one size fits all CBA, which leads to financial crisis for some teams and not others... which is ultimately what has led us to a lockout. Without a CBA, each team could manage their finances as they see fit in order to retain profitability, thus avoiding a multitude of teams bleeding money each year, as is the case currently. Full disclosure - I am generally against labor unions.

Jim, there's no need to get so upset here. Besides, if the league had let you buy Phoenix, you'd be on the other side of this argument now. A fair CBA does exist for all 30 teams, it's just a matter of getting there. The quickest thing to do would be substantially lower the cap floor. The floor, while a good idea in theory, just serves to drive up the cost of scrubs while cheap teams need to fill roster space to get to the floor. If it wasn't for Florida needing to get to the floor, does anyone seriously think Tomas Kopecky makes anywhere close to 3 mil per season? Your bottom dwelling teams are all offering these crazy contracts to the same scrubs they always have, but now you have Ville Leino saying "If Kopecky is worth 3.5 a year, then I know I'm worth 6." Of course the players love this. If you're Jeff Finger or Wiznewski, you love getting a fat check for a mediocre skillset. But that's not healthy longterm, and leads to escalations of salaries ala Suter/Parise/Weber. You say noone forced the owners to give these guys the contracts. This is true. However, if the owners all got together and decided they wouldn't spend more than x dollars for any contract, everyone would be complaining about collusion and how the system's not fair. Can't have it both ways. If they got rid of the salary floor, or made it a percentage rather than a hard number based on the cap, and removed revenue sharing, that would go a long way to sorting this out. Let the CBJ spend nothing on players, and let them die. But they players wouldn't accept that either. Teams going away means less jobs in the NHL, and Ericsson, Emmerton, Drew Miller, etc. would end up in the AHL. There's no easy solution here, but you can't pretend the players are operating in a vacuum either, and that the only party at fault is the owners/league.

You took my arguments out of context. You keep saying what union's reps were says, and I keep saying what league's were saying. However, my talks are funny and have no ground while yours are universaly known truth. I said I haven't seen teams financial statement, but PA saw them for sure. However, they don't argue expense increase, they argue how much... I once said: 'yes, I dislike unions in general'English is obviously not my native language, but I'd never thought dislike is a synonym for hate. Well, I also dislike milk. Or should I now hate it?

He was assigned to GR. Pretty sure that means he is playing there.

Whilst I cannot dispute that the rookie Fedorov had less in front of him (Yzerman) than the rookie Datsyuk (Yzerman, Fedorov, Larionov, even Draper) that misses the point. Fedorov at 21 was a FAR better player than Datsyuk. The only reason Sergei wasn't in the NHL at 18 or 19 was because of the Iron Curtain, also the reason he was a 4th round pick and not a top-5 pick as his talent deserved. He scored 79 points his rookie year - roster depth and higher scoring era notwithstanding, it took Pavel till his 5th season in the NHL to top that. There's nothing wrong per se with being a late bloomer, most players are, its usually only lottery picks like Crosby, Malkin etc who can come in at 18 or 19 and perform like stars. When Pavel arrived, he was a shy, undersized kid - outstanding stickhandling ability that had everyones eyes popping out, but no-one, no-one predicted the 2-way beast he would become. How much of that was opportunity, maturity, increasing strength, confidence, desire, Babcock's coaching, who knows? The fact is Pavel was 27 before he had a season that could be compared to Sergei. At 27 Feds had won 2 Selke's, a Hart and was a 3-time All-Star. Fedorov was bigger, stronger, faster, had a better slap-shot, a better one-timer, as good defensively and almost as good a stickhandler (but no-one compares to Pav). Oh, and 163 points in 162 playoff games going head to head against the likes of Sakic, Forsberg, Modano, Niewendyk, Roy and Belfour year in and year out throughout the Dead Puck era.

You quoted me before I could change that up...but I know it was some kind of locker stall thing they do to put these future leaders next to current leaders. Fil was mentioned in that regard. Not only that, but his name came out of Lidstrom's mouth when asked about a replacement captain. I think that is enough to give merit to.

Bettman is lazy and he sucks.

Bruce Arthur's story about Uncle Gary's reference to the Mafia's organization and how it controls underlings in a university thesis was funny .

Business also doesn't typically have a lottery to pick its employees as 18 year olds and tell them which franchise they work for, own their rights to be employed, or trade their employees for compensation. You're really oversimplifying how a professional sports league works.

Honestly them asking for rollbacks doesn't surprise me either. I was just surprised at how outrageous their proposal is. Had they made a more reasonable proposal for a rollback, they probably could've gotten it by now. Instead they went nuclear. 52% seems like a good number. Get the players to give up 5%, but then make the concession that CBA term has to be longer like the league wants. Then when that ends, re-evaluate how many franchises are still struggling and why. The NHL's proposal was as if the league was in a massive financial crisis. It's not. Like I said from the beginning, a group of knowledgeable hockey fans and hockey reporters could get together and knock out a a pretty equitable CBA in a day. This should have been the smoothest negotiations of all of them. I have to wonder if the owners saw the other league's negotiations and the players share under 50% and started licking their chops.

That is only until the AHL season starts. He talked about this in the press recently...just playing a few games for EV Zug and taking care of loose ends in Switzerland, and then playing with the Griffs this season until the lockout ends (if it ends).

http://www.sportsnet...d_for_business/ Great article by Andrew Zimbalist a renowned economist, doesn't know much about the game but was asked to review the NHL from a business perspective

Well Nyquist is headed to the Griffins according to Aftonbladet.se. Seems like a pretty exhaustive list, at least concerning Swedish players. EDIT: Figured I'd go ahead and translate what the rest of the DRW players are planning on doing: Henrik Zetterberg, 31, Detroit Red Wings. Staying in Detroit for now and working out. Will go to another club at the earliest around Christmas and if it's Sweden the Timrå is the only option. Niklas Kronwall, 31, Detroit Red Wings. Will take a couple of weeks to see if the conflict gets resolved. After that he'll play for Djurgården in Sweden to help them get back to the SEL. Johan Franzén, 32, Detroit Red Wings. Will continue working out with team mates at the rink they've rented together in Detroit. Mikael Samuelsson, 35, Detroit Red Wings. Says that it will take a lot for him to play anywhere else. Wants to be with his family after many years of moves across NA. Jonathan Ericsson, 28, Detroit Red Wings. The Swedish Detroit player who seems most eager to play. Even rumored that he might join his old club Vita Hästen in Division 1 (That would be the 3rd tier league in Sweden). Gustav Nyquist, 23, Detroit Red Wings. Starts the season with the Grand Rapids Griffins. Jonas Gustavsson, 27, Detroit Red Wings. Has not made a decision, continues to work out with new team mates in Detroit. Tomas Holmström, 39, Detroit Red Wings Still hasn't decided if he'll continue to play or retire.

Zetterberg or Kronwall Helm isn't ready yet for this duty.

Did you guys hear? NHL13 is coming out with a new, "Be the commissioner," mode! Yeah all you do is smash the disk, and no one gets to play.

My belief is there never is justification for a lockout or running out of time with negotiations. How long have they known about the CBA expiration? Oh, yeah, since the last one was signed. Waiting to the last minute is ridiculous.

I don't remember who said it, but someone pointed out how a lock-out should be the league's last resort in situations like this. It definitely seems like they've been using it as a first option to push around the NHLPA. I remember when Bettman made the announcement to cancel the season last time, he very clearly stated that the offer they had on the table would have been the best the players would get, and now it's off the table. Then he comes back six years later looking to for a better bargain after the league has had nothing but success. What is wrong with this guy? It shows a real lapse in compassion for the fans. It's one thing to negotiate aggressively, but it's another to take it so far as shutting the game down over and over. I haven't been overly critical of Bettman over the years because the guy is doing his job by playing hardball and getting done what his employers ask of him. I don't know if it's from Bettman or somewhere else in the chain of command, but it's clear that there is a force out there that generally doesn't understand how much it means to fans to have hockey each year. It makes me think things might be different if the commissioner was born and raised in Canada or another hockey hotbed, and not some dude from Queens who was originally working for the NBA.

"the National Hockey League has been, and remains, committed to negotiating around the clock to reach a new CBA" BULLS***. If they were comitted to negotiating around the clock, then they would be, you know, NEGOTIATING AROUND THE CLOCK. There was absolutely NO urgency to any of the talks, or they would have been burning the midnight oil for months to avoid the current situation, not throwing around the word LOCKOUT with a month to go in negotiations. Good faith my lily white ass. Excuse me while I go rage some more...

I just have to say, that's an awesome avatar.

All hail the hardworking, great hockeymind, always fair and never at fault midget and his stupid wellfare teams. Blame als has to go to all the greedy bastard owners who just can't found a way to screw all the momentum the NHL had. Superb job really worth wasting 8.000.000 for midgetlike hat-trick. Record revenues, recod attendances and growth over the last 7 years hey lets lockout the player again, so we can keep all these failed franchises and piss poor playing owners alive right? Screw you NHL; I am happily watching the SEL, AHL and NLA hope the players wait this out as long as it takes otherwhise the damn midget will lock them out everytime they aren't accepting such insulting proposals. God I still can't believe it, stubborn owners keeping this damn commissioner employed. Sure Ecclestone and Blatter are worse than the mafia but midget is easily top 5 in terms of worst sports commissioners ever. May he be attacked by a furious octopus.

there its is boys and girls, our 22nd consecutive playoff team