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I am so ANGRY right now. Knew this was coming for weeks, and it just gets worse and worse. The 2012 lockout, for me anyway, is so much worse than the 2004-05 lockout. At least during THAT lockout, I felt like the game had serious problems that needed to be addressed. Also, we didn't know what the loss of a full season would feel like, and there was hope (until January) that it could be saved. This time, I KNOW what a lockout feels like. And this lockout has NO purpose that means anything to a fan. All the people telling me that the owners need a bigger share of the pie so that the 18 teams losing money can be back in the black...shut up. Please shut up. There was nothing in the owners' proposal that would do anything to keep idiot GM's from circumventing their own rules they asked for, and generally doing an awful job running hockey teams in markets that don't even really want hockey. If I hear the phrase "new NHL" one more time, I might have a nervous breakdown. What did we accomplish in exchange for losing an entire year? Take back your stupid salary cap, cap floor, trapezoid, regular season shootouts, and obstruction calls and give me back the old NHL. If you had to completely blow up the system to get what you want, and having gotten what you want (plus $3.3 billion revenues), and you STILL can't figure out how to divide up all the money you collected from the fans?!

Saying the NHL can go fornicate with itself is putting it mildly. I'm sick of the league, I'm sick of the people running the league, I'm sick of the people running the Players' Association.....sick of them all. Fire them all, hire new people, start from scratch. Or in more direct terms, scorch the earth and then salt it.

Free coffee and doughnuts?

I miss him and the NHL so much, but I'm glad to see he is enjoying his time away. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nhl--pavel-datsyuk-s-wisdom--whimsy-and-wizardry-on-full-display-in-khl.html

You'd probably be better off just contacting your credit card company and having them do a chargeback, since the WC has now been officially canceled.

I don't have HBO :/ Maybe I'll take my center ice funds and save them up for next winter so I can have HBO.

I didn't know the ramifications were, regarding players getting injured in non-NHL games, until I read this.

Well, opinions can change. Having said that, I don't know what makes people more confident now that there will be games as opposed to two weeks ago. If anything, those are backwards from what I would expect.

Knowing the NHL, I am sure they are not really free. The NHL is probably going to add up the cost of all the coffee, donuts and bottled water from all the meetings and add it on to the amount that the players "owe" them.

Half the people I told I had tickets to the WC were like, "What's that?" Then again, I am in Texas.

Okay, where to start? I will assume you simply don't understand the finances or what the profits actually mean when using to assume a return on investment....because that is what it appears when you make that comment. However, it could be completely possible that you are presenting the information in such a way to make it look like the owners aren't making much at all (not sure why you'd do that...but it's possible). 1) I'm not sure what the $240 million represents....if it was the approximate team value, fine....doesn't seem too far off. However, I don't think I can recall any owner who has recently paid that kind of money to acquire a franchise (other than the recent Maple Leafs transaction....but we can all agree that is in another category). So when you are talking about return on investment, consider increases in market values of the franchises themselves, not just profits earned each year. Didn't Ilitch pay about $8M for the Wings....pretty decent return on investment he's been able to generate I think. 2) If you are looking at profits only, you will never be able to understand whether the players get a fair share vs. the owners. EBITDA is probably a pretty good guage to use. In a lot of cases, if the net profit of a franchise is close to nil....the owner could be getting a pretty good return on their investment, it all depends on how everything is structured. So, let's start with your $5M profit per team. Then, we should gross it up for various items, but the 3 biggest being the following: 1) Taxes - assume taxes at about 30%....that will bring the $5M up to about $7M or so (remember, player salaries are pre-tax as well). 2) Interest or debt servicing costs - this is a real wild card. I would assume that the vast majority of franchises in the NHL are highly leveraged....they didn't simply take money out of their bank accounts and buy a franchise, they borrowed money. So, whatever interest they are incurring on that debt would decrase profits (amount of interest could be $10-20 million or more....based on $200M borrowing at a rate of 5-10%). It is very important to add this back because it is irrelevant from the players perspective. If an owner comes in with all their own money, they won't incurr that cost. 3) Depreciation (non-cash) - if a team owns the building, their profit will be less due to depreciation charges taken on the building....you'd need to add that back to get a true sense of the income being generated at the owners' investments. So....in summary, I have no idea what the true average return on investment might be, but I do know for sure it is well in excess of what you have illustrated. Based on these factors, it points to why splitting a revenue number is the most appropriate because everything below that is really a function of how the owner runs his business. I think the overall profits the NHL owners are generating are very good (this doesn't even consider their rising franchise values). Time and time again, I'll keep coming back to the problem being disparity of revenue generation amoung teams, not how much money the players are making.

It's going to be today, I would think. The tough part of this is as that as much as a win the "trap" 50/50 proposal was for the owners from a P.R. standpoint, somebody with the NHL now has to stand up and explain that they're cancelling this game. While people understand that this is a negotiation and both sides are at fault, there's still the mental association that the league decides its lockout is more important than this extremely popular and ridiculously anticipated event. And it's not just the event, it's like the cancellation of a TV mini-series with the HBO 24/7 angle, as well. This sucks. I've talked to casual sports fans who didn't even know there was a lockout two weeks into the season. I don't think you can even measure the damage of taking this event off of TV on January 1st, just when it was getting to the point where it was an annual event people might have looked for.

Wow, you're really something. Two posts ago I agreed with you and said that there's a real good chance he never scores 20 or 30 goals in the NHL. The point of contention, which I guess I need to remind you of, was the fact that in your first post you said the reason he wouldn't score in the NHL is because he's small and not "lightening fast". Then, after I corrected you and provided evidence, you kept arguing based on your viewing of his "highlight videos", and now you've changed the discussion completely and are railing about Emmerton and Smith. I only ever wanted to correct your false impression that Brunner is not "lightening fast". He is. That doesn't mean he'll be any good in the NHL, but it can't hurt. In the future it might help to admit when you're wrong. Also, it might help to not try and change the discussion around each time you're wrong on a point. Here's how it should go... Axe: Brunner is small and not lightening fast Kip: Yes he is lightening fast, here's proof Axe: Oh, I guess I was wrong. Still that's no guarantee he'll be good in the NHL Kip: Agreed.

This is still the funniest thing I have read, and it came from TSN.

All I know is that if they cancel the WC, they need to keep the teams for the next season. I'd hate to see the Wings and Leafs get screwed out of this.

So you miss us?? Honey, it doesn't even come close to how much you are missed here. Trust me.

I like this quote from that article:

Was just gonna post this article, never gets old reading how well respected Dats is.

Trust me, we miss you too Pasha

Yep. Heck, using that analogy, I bet I'm close to Mexico than I am to you. In all honesty, I wasn't sure how close Switzerland was to Sweden. Now I see they are not neighboring in much regard at all. It's been years since Geography.

I feel bad. I sold Matt my two seats on top of his for a chance to get better ones on StubHub, so he's really stuck. I won't be going now. IF it's on and IF I watch it (and it's Wings/Leafs, so no matter how pissed I am, there's a pretty good chance) I'll watch it from the warmth and comfort of my sister's couch with her big screen HD TV.

Lost too much depth? We lost Lidstrom (who is unreplacable) and Stuart... Replaced with Quincey, Smith and Colaiacovo... those three more than replace Staurt...again, you cannot replace Lidstrom, nort even with Suter... up front we lost Hudler, Holmstrom and will probably lose two of Miller/Eaves/Mursak/Emmerton...replaced with Tootoo, Sammy, Brunner a full time Nyquist and long term Helm and Abby...GRR has nice depth to fill injuries... We lost the revolving door of a back up to Howard and gained a legit #2 in the Monster. I give Holland an A for trying to land all the top talent in the UFA market, all in all, I give the off season a B+ considering that with the exception of Lidstrom, everyone that was signed was an upgrade to the folks we lost.... The only thing I would change is I would have shopped around Franzine, but who knows, maybe he did that too! Lidstrom = Unreplacable Quincey/Smith better than Stuart Colaiacovo better than Commie and Kindl still #7 Sammy better than Hudler Nyquist better than Holmstrom Tootoo better than any "tough" guy since Downey Helm and Abby here long term....and happy to be! Gustavsson better than Conklin/MacDonald combined. not to even mention the awesome draft Holland had! He went big and skilled and tough, everything we have been bitching at him to do for years! Get this CBA taken care of, sign Dekeyser after his senior year is up, trade Emmy/Mursak/Kindl for some picks and lets get this thing rolling! If the season goes kaput, then so be it, but this team is still deeper than it was last season...and better with the exception of Lids...

Hockey's Future ranks the Wings at #10 Hockey Prospectus ranks the WIngs at #3 I think both of them are better sources when it comes to hockey than ESPN.