StormJH1

I'm one of the "undercover LGW'ers" living in Minnesota, the fan base here just really annoys me. Obviously, they know the sport itself, or they wouldn't bother taking their kids to all those 6am practices and obsessing over WCHA games with the Golden Gophers. But given that they had no hockey here from 1993-99 (an era of DRAMATIC change in the NHL), and then Lemaire trapped and dumped his way to 8 terribly boring seasons when they got the Wild...it's almost like their impressions of the professional game are locked in some time capsule from the 1970's. When Slap Shot and the Minnesota North Stars are your reference points for the NHL, it explains whey they always need a super-goon here - from Boogaard (R.I.P.) to John Scott to Zenon Konopka. People need to keep in mind that the Wild were as bad as they were for a reason last year. They had the NHL's best record for, like, 20 games, and then were AWFUL. I think their 2nd half record was worse than Columbus last year. The defensive corps is young and undersized. Adding a horse like Suter helps, but I always thought Weber was clearly superior out of those two, and they always played together. So how much do we really know about Suter? Parise is like the messiah here - they should've just given him the "C" and bumped Koivu down to an "A" because it seems inevitable anyway. Homegrown kid comes home, and his dad played for the North Stars for parts of 8 seasons. People assumed here that Parise would sign during LAST season, which made it more annoying when it actually happened. But at least with Parise, you understand the appeal. The Wings needed Suter, and he came to Minnesota just to follow Parise and because of his wife. I've taken to calling him "Becky" around my Wild fans, let's see how long before they pick up on it. I think the Wild are a better team than they were before, but their first two opponents weren't world beaters, and things are screwy all over the league because of the quick start. I still believe that you can't make a bad team good just by adding a player (or two). (See 2001 Capitals, New York Rangers since 1995). Minnesota will likely get better, but mostly because of their revamped farm system, which went from horrible two years ago to one of the better ones in hockey now.

Jesus. Great, half our farm system has a concussion now. Mrazek got beaten to a pulp - love how the ref slid his lifeless corpse away from the other goalie. Also, what the hell was that siren going off in the background? Is that some sort of signal for everyone to pretend they're in "Slap Shot"? Great call on that Islanders/Pens brawl by @stevkrause above. The teams with the "best fighters" are usually the teams in the bottom half of the standings. Probably because you have to offer some raw meat for the fairweather fans to chew on.

I'm also a Wings fan in Minnesota. The national games for Detroit are almost half the season this year, but I decided to try out GameCenter anyway. But yes, it's a bummer for people that don't even have the cable subscription that their streaming options are dictated by the cable providers they could have gotten the game on. I think a couple of the games are NBC on the weekend, so presumably you could see those, but NBC Sports Network and NHL Network are a no. Guess we'll find out tomorrow. I don't understand why there should be any issues given that it's not even like these are "new" apps. They should have been ready in October and just "flipped the switch", but I guess not.

I went ahead and bought the $50 GameCenter Live subscription. It's actually a good year for a new user to try it out, given the shorter season and decreased price. HOWEVER, a note to Roku users, Roku and/or the NHL screwed up with the lockout and it does not look like it will be working on Roku (as it did last year) until possibly late February. Really, it's pretty unacceptable. http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=54018 They give you a code to enter within the Roku app, but when you go to the NHL website to enter it in, it's nowhere to be found. The $49 little Roku LT and Roku HD sell for about 1/2 the price of an Apple TV, and have become pretty popular. However, the lack of Roku support is doubly painful because it doesn't allow me to access NHL Vault, either, which is part of the subscription, yet does not work on Apple TV. I do have an Apple TV upstairs in a different room, and I have other iOS devices. The iPhone app looks completely ready to go. The Apple TV app allowed me to log in and authenticate, but otherwise has not changed from the recaps of last year's Finals that have been there for months. I expect (hope) this will change for tomorrow's openers.

Can we all just agree right now that the 2012-13 lockout did nothing to stop what happened after the 2004-05 lockout, and that mid-level players will continue to be badly overpaid? I've heard people reference the Zajac contract (8yrs/46 mil) as proof that the new CBA is working. Working how, exactly? Just because the new contracts won't be longer than 8 years and won't have crazy variances where the amounts tail off at the end doesn't mean we're rid of dumb contracts. Dumb contracts happen because the less-financially stable hockey clubs hover near the cap floor, which is 15 - 20 million below the cap ceiling. As soon as they lose a big-salary player to retirement, expired contract, or trade, they are pressured by both the fans and the cap floor itself to spend money quickly on whatever is available. The Devils don't have many long-term contracts outside of Kovalchuk, and Brodeur's deal is coming off the books after this year or next, in all likelihood. Backdiving contracts were ONE way in which players costs went up, but really, they only affected a small percentage of super long deals, and those are usually with very desirable players that are worth the risk. The mid-level contracts are what continues to destroy the game, and that was even the case before the '04 lockout (Marty Lapointe's deal and the like). This fact will become increasingly evident as we know the cap is going down next year, yet we'll still see big deals and re-signings like this all over the league. I'm not sure exactly how you fix it (other than thinning out the league so that virtually all of its members could at least afford spending to the Cap), but I don't want any illusion that the CBA "fixed" it.

I don't understand this at all. It sounds like the classic case of a team losing a big-time free agent (in this case, Parise) and then feeling the need to overpay somebody either on the FA market or on your own team to compensate for it. Buffalo did this for years, and look at the crap contracts they have now. So did Montreal. And when the Wild lost Gaborik, they went and paid Havlat a big portion of the money they used to pay Gaborik, and it was terrible until they made a pretty good trade with the Sharks. I think the fact that the first "max" deal paid out to retained FA being Zajac at 46 million is a terrible precedent. If the owners truly thought that capping deals at 8 years would discourage long-term commitments, they obviously don't follow the NBA. NBA max deals are shorter, but players feel "slighted" if they don't get the full extent of what teams can pay them. If I'm the agent of any pending free agent mid-level player, I'm pointing to Zajac getting a max deal the first chance I get. The point of a long-term deal is supposed to be agreeing to less money PER YEAR in exchange for long-term security. Could you imagine Zajac making 6.5 million or 7 million in ANY year on a shorter-term deal? I sure the heck can't.

This comment doesn't trouble me at all, and it's even more benign than what Devellano said a few years ago when he basically said the fan base was spoiled by success (which, by the way, is true. And also a pretty damn good problem to have). A couple of seasons ago (I believe it was 2010-11), the Wings were not in Playoff position until about halfway through the season, due to injuries and other issues. I think Holland was just stating the obvious fact that a prolonged slow start of that type in a 48-game season...and there's no coming back from it.

Here's what they say about Vault: What is NHL Vault™? NHL Vault™ is a monthly subscription offering post-game replays from a five-year game archive plus access to an extensive library of classic games dating back to the 1960s, all for the low price of $4.95 per month. It is free for all NHL GameCenter LIVE™ subscribers. The five-year game archive includes full-length and condensed 10-15 minute replays of every game since the 2007-2008 season, including post-replays added nightly from the current season.* Sign up at nhl.com/vault *Full-length replays from the current season are subject to in-market and national blackouts in the US and Canada. If the game was available to watch live on television in your local area, the full-length replay will become available 48-hours after game completion. All other games are available next day. There are no blackout regulations on condensed replays. To see what teams are considered in-market and are therefore, unavailable to watch within 48-hours of game completion, pleasecheck your zip code. --- Don't know if it works or not. GameCenter Live probably isn't as much of an out-of-market "necessity" as it would be full seasons where more games were unavailable nationally, but for only $50 and with a variety of options where I could watch it (Apple TV, Roku, iPad, iPhone, computer), I think it's worth a shot. If the quality is absolutely terrible, then I'll know not to waste more money next year. Hopefully it's at least as good as MLB's streaming service.

PROTECT THE SHIELD!!! This doesn't really fit here, but I just felt like yelling it out.

Brilliant. I think the bulk of the hockey-following public really has lost touch with this debate. They hear little bits and pieces of another "concession" by the owners, and when a deal doesn't happen the next day, it must be because Fehr's an *******. There is no "negotiation" here. This is more like a hostage situation where Bettman has kidnapped little bits and pieces of what the players already had, and letting them out piece by piece. At the end of the day, if he's only taking and not giving back, he's still the aggressor in all of this. Player salaries did not become inflated (AGAIN) because the players are "greedy" or "overpaid". The salaries went up because the 2005 CBA and its salary cap that the OWNERS unilaterally wanted and forced upon the NHLPA is fundamentally broken. To put the salary cap and floor so close together and to raise the cap so aggressively so that it nearly doubled in the course of 7 years is absurd. The struggling market teams literally HAD to start overpaying mid-level guys to even meet the salary floor. It's not like Crosby and Ovechkin are readily available on the free agent market. You fill out your team and keep your budget up by paying way too much for Jeff Finger, Mike Cammeileri, or Ville Leino. And worst of all, the same owners who now say they're all losing money were going out of their way to pay more ACTUAL money than the salary cap apparently allows. How do you expect the NHLPA to "give in", given that total lack of credibility on the other side?

Oh, I absolutely agree that games are done for 2012. Too many logistics involved even if there were a deal. Plus, you'd have to figure there's be SOME type of mini-mini-training camp or team orientation before they throw a regular season product on the ice. Still, a January (or even early February) start of some kind is still possible, but we're running out of precious time. I can't help but feel encouraged today. But that being said, how does this work, exactly? If Bettman and Fehr are kind of like the ultimate "keepers of the numbers" for their respective sides, what agreements are being worked on without them even present in the room? We'll really have to see how today plays out.

I love that it exists, and I love that it was added to the Comcast package I already had last year, without having to add another tier of coverage or anything. But it's probably the weakest of the 4 "major" sports networks, which is too bad because the NHL really needs additional good TV coverage to supplement the NBC stuff. It's not too fair to judge it right now because obviously there were supposed to be games going on, and they can't really air 24/7 lockout coverage. Actually, I haven't seen much lockout coverage on the TV channel at all. SiriusXM's NHL channel talks about it quite a bit, along with a lot of AHL coverage, but their lockout discussions are a little infuriating at times because they have a few guys that are just clearly pro-owner and think the players should just give in to whatever demands the league makes. Not too unexpected, however, given that they're the network for the league. I think the TV NHL Network needs better variety of programming, and it seems like they don't as much access to in-game look-ins as MLB network does. They have a recap show (which is bare bones, but I actually like) and a version of a look-in show, but it could use some work. Also, they show programs like "Oil Change" constantly, and there isn't a lot of original programming. They run these "Day that changed hockey" things that look dated and are just copied from old programs. TSN's Canadian coverage, especially around trade deadline day (which itself has become pretty boring) is quite good - they make it FEEL like the NFL of Canada. It would be nice if NHL Network could put some effort into making their coverage more colorful like that - it would help more people be interested in the product and the network. I will say that DVR gives added value to it - as an out-of-market Wings fan, I would sometimes DVR replays of Wings games they show at 3am the morning after they happened. But I could never "surprise myself" with the outcome, even if I tried to, because they run the damn score crawl at the bottom that shows you how said game turned out. Haha.

My position is that I could use all the nasty rhetoric I want, but the fact is that they're ALREADY losing money they could have had from me. I spend between $100-$300 on tickets per year, usually on the two Wings games in Minnesota, plus some other Wild games. I was planning on dropping the $100+ for the first time on either Center Ice or whatever the AppleTV app (GameCenter?) is to watch out-of-market Wings games. Not to mention I was a reliable set of eyeballs on NHL broadcasts. And there's people who spend FAR, FAR more than I do. They're already losing my money. I don't need to pretend like I won't come back for it to hurt, it should already hurt them. As for mediation, I had zero confidence that it would do anything, as did most of the reason. But while most people were focusing on the non-binding aspect, they're missing the point. The industry I work in does non-binding mediation also, but it is often very successful. The difference is that the parties view the mediator as a proxy for what an arbitrator or judge might LATER conclude in a subsequent binding proceeding. Here, there is no final binding procedure, so even if the mediator came in, railed on one side and told them "you're going to lose", it wouldn't amount to anything. I'm actually surprised how many regular fans are buying into this notion AGAIN that the players are responsible for these teams not being able to operate at a profit. The Forbes story has tons of flaws, I'm sure, but is it really any less reliable than the self-reporting being done by Bettman and the owners? They have no interest in representing their businesses as "successful" in any way during these negotiations, and we don't have the actual numbers.

That second point is what I think the majority of people I argue with don't seem to understand. To solve a problem, your solution actually has to address the root cause of that problem. Otherwise, it's like trying to bandage on your finger to cure a headache - it doesn't make any sense. In 2004/05, there was an idea that player salaries had gotten out of control. Even thought the fans personally identified with the players more than a bunch of suits who own and operate the teams, public sentiment was largely on the side of the owners. A lot of people, myself included, assumed that if you put a reasonable cap in place, ALL teams would have to spend more responsibly. More importantly, the disparity in budget between the "haves" and "have nots", by definition could not be more than $16 million (difference between cap floor and cap ceiling). The new CBA really could have succeeded. But two things happened between 2005 and 2012 that really destroyed any chance for smaller markets to compete again. The first was that the revenues of the game grew, which meant that the cap increased: Raise your hand if you really thought we would nearly DOUBLE the salary cap by 2012 (oh, and by the way, in the midst of a massive worldwide recession). Oh, and by the way, teams like the Detroit Red Wings, who were derisively referred to as the "Yankees" of the NHL, actually didn't spend more than the current salary cap amount before the new CBA, except for one season (2003-04). That "all-star" team that one the 2001-02 Cup with something like 11 Hall of Famers on it? Their payroll of $66 million would've fit easily into the Cap for the 2012-13 season. Of course, the problem was getting worse and worse without a Cap, and I agreed at the time that Salary Cap was necessary. Unfortunately, the implementation of that did nothing to slow the increase of salaries. It simply reset the clock for a few years, which is necessary anyway after you sit out a whole season and disillusion much of your fanbase. The second thing that happened, of course, was the backdiving contracts and owners/GM's figuring out ways to spend more on players than the team's cap figure would seem to imply. This is significant financially because if you're handing out money to minor league stashes, bonuses, and actual payments to players larger than their cap hit would suggest, then the salary cap really isn't doing much to limit spending, which was supposed to be the whole point of this fiscal responsibility push in 2004-05 in the first place. Long story short, the system was fundamentally flawed, and the combination of the increased cap and "cheater" contracts that payed more than they appear to led to sustained spending on players. Those problems do need to be fixed so that spending can't get out of control again. But if you're Phoenix, or Nashville, or Dallas, or whatever...people still need to want to BUY your product, or you'll never make money like the big boys. Even worse, the CBA that is supposed to help all teams by controlling spending actually hurts franchises by putting a cap FLOOR on those teams. Many of those franchises are going to draw 10,000 to 12,000 per game whether they spend $25 million or $50 million on payroll. There just aren't enough fans to support the product long-term in those markets, and that has nothing to do with the players or how much revenue they get.

I generally respect his game, and think that some of the "crybaby" stuff gets a bit overplayed, but I did lose even more respect for him in that debacle of a playoff series against the Flyer where he started running around and instigating FIGHTS, only a few months removed from having to shut it down again after bumping his head on a teammate's shoulder. If we're at a point now in our education about head injuries where we criticize the old days where concussions were considered a "lack of toughness", when do we get a point where we place personal responsibility of knowing to avoid selfish and unnecessary punching matches as the star of your team? I'm not even a fan of Crosby, but it still angered me to see him endanger himself in that way after waiting so long to get back. And of course, none of the Barry Melrose types in the media called him on it because he was just showing more "toughness" and "leadership".

My wife would be excited - she always thought Osgood was one of the most attractive Red Wings. Not sure I fully understood that admiration as a heterosexual male, but I did love Ozzie as a player. An absolute class act and a guy that probably should've had a mental breakdown about 12 different times, but never did. In fact, he was one of those rare players who got noticeably BETTER when it really, really mattered. I'm not sure that most goalies would have been able to recover from something like the '94 out-of-net goal against the Sharks, or some of the long bombs he gave up in the '98 playoffs. But I would've put his mental toughness and poise against anyone in the game, even admitting that his size and athletic abilities were decidedly average. And to be able to reinvent himself from a hybrid style to a pure butterflyer leading up to the 2008 Cup - amazing at that age.

This whole thing is so sickening. Even though I feel like the NHLPA still has some measure of additional support from the public/media as compared to the owners...it feels like even the people who support the NHLPA have allowed this entire debate to be stuffed into the framework laid out by the NHL. The idea that "we have to get to 50/50", which is really just a completely arbitrary distribution that SOUNDS non-arbitrary, necessarily called for a massive reduction in player revenues and a lockout. What rationale could there possibly be for completely shutting down the product and asking the players to shift hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue back to the owners, when the product (as a whole) was actually generating far more money than seemed possible in 2005? We don't see the actual numbers behind these purported losses by the 18 NHL franchises. What part does the players share of revenues have in the fact that about half of the league can't operate at a profit...any more than the players have to do with the fact that some other franchises have turned CONSIDERABLE profits? Moreover, if the cap floor is fixed at $16 million below the cap maximum, why don't we see 15-20 teams bottoming out as close to that floor as they possibly can, if they're hurting for money so bad anyways? Heck, you have a greater chance of making the playoffs as you do missing the playoffs anyway (16 out of 30), why not just save $10 million a year by bottoming out and hoping that enough other teams do the same? If Nashville and Phoenix can make the playoffs multiple times with all the issues they have financially, couldn't anybody? The surprising truth is that most owners actually want to win. They want to win so badly that they will cheat their own CBA provisions as much as they can, waste money on stashed minor leaguers, backloaded deals, and bonuses that don't even appear in the cap, and overpay undeserving players like Ville Leino, Mike Cammileleri, and Jeff Finger chasing the dream. Then, when the bubble bursts again, they'll just ask for more money every 7 years. I'm sorry, but that's not the way to run a business. I don't blame Jeff Finger for taking huge money to play a game he loves, to support a career that could be over tomorrow if he crashes into the boards wrong. I do blame the guys who thought paying that money was a good idea, and drooled over expansion fees without putting any type of revenue sharing in place to support struggling teams.

Wow, weird timing on how this thing blew up all of the sudden, ESPN.com has it as one of their 11 "headline" stories on the front page (right below the breaking news that Hope Solo is happy in her marriage). Guess it's all about an "angle". NHL news rarely makes it on that page for actual game events, but if some unknown prospect gets arrested wearing a Tellytubby costume during a lockout - now that's news!

Well, heck, if the baseline standard for Holland as a GM is "deals in magic", no wonder he can't live up to the hype! Unfortunately, while Suter would have been a good signing, I don't think magic could've done the trick to get him here. Maybe witchcraft. I think what people underappreciate about good GM's like Holland is that the majority of doing a good job is all about the moves you didn't make. Since the cap was implemented, you can't find a single long-term really bad deal that has strapped this team. Some people are hot and cold on Franzen, but his cap hit of under $4 million is totally reasonable for his level of production. Even the Ericsson and Quincy deals, which are 2 or 3 years between 3-4 million per...sure I was annoyed when we signed those, but if the alternative is paying the same amount on the open market for Jeff Finger, or going up to the $5 million range for similar players...the Wings never make those type of mistakes. And the reality of being an older team that's always a buyer or neutral at the deadline (because we're always in the mix) means that have lower drafter picks to use, and have to trade some of them for other veteran pieces. I full admit acknowledge that Sammy and Tootoo deals make no sense to me, but I can't get too up in arms about relatively small commitments to role players when we still have quite a bit of cap room to play with. But the main thing is that we have no idea what the CBA will look like when we emerge from this lockout. Budget-wise, however, I would have to have think that it's much preferable to have a bit a buffer built into there, as opposed to being right up against the (current) Cap. I imagine that Cap will have to go down, one way or another.

This issue so complicated because of the polarizing figure that is Gary Bettman. A New York lawyer running the most popular sport in Canada. 3 significant work stoppages in 18 years. @Nightfall is partially right when he says that Bettman was not the "cause" of the lockout. Admittedly, that would be an oversimplification. I heard a TSN podcast today where one guy wondered if this isn't just the "new normal" given the fact that salaries were so constant for so many years and then shot up exponentially in the past 20 years. He wondered if the underlying problem isn't just that nobody knows "what anything is worth" in the NHL. But I refuse to give Bettman a pass on "causing the lockout" for this reason: He DID create and stubbornly support the environment that caused this lockout to happen in the last 2 CBA's. When you a situation where you can make $3.3 billion in profits AND it can also be true that (allegedly) 18 franchises are operating in the red, you have fundamental problems. If I honestly believed that setting HRR at 50/50 and just telling the players to give a little more back would solve those problems, I would turn on the NHLPA and Fehr in a heartbeat. But here's the thing: I have zero confidence that Phoenix, Dallas, Nashville, Florida, etc are suddenly going to become profitable simply because you cap player contracts at 5 years, lower the salary cap, and take money out of the players' share. I have zero confidence because we were told that everything in '05 CBA was necessary to save those bottom-feeder teams, and it didn't work. The problem is the structure of the league, and the freedom of the owners to continue spending even with a hard cap in place. The deeper problem is that the league is badly overexpanded into places it doesn't belong. Phoenix is not going to start drawing 15,000 a game just because you made it so the Parises and Suters of the world only sign $40 million deals instead of $98 million ones. And when ownership in Phoenix or any other city in Bettman's "Grand Sun Belt Experiment" tried to sell to owners/cities with actual money and an interest in hockey, Bettman blocked it. Unless you are willing to dramatically revise how revenue sharing works and commit yourself to having the Tornto-type markets carrying the struggling teams (which is obviously problematic), this will continue to happen. And Bettman (who whoever represents the owners) will continue to ask for additional money every CBA simply because they can.

I think the league is sitting back because after their "3 up, 3 rejected" response within the course of an hour to the NHLPA's counteroffers in October, they'll look like absolute clowns if they reject this thing immediately again. Still, as this portion of Pierre LeBrun's article hints, I find it hard to believe this approach will gain a significant foothold for the NHLPA: BASED ON PERCENTAGE OF HRR For the first time, the NHLPA offered a framework based on the league’s preferred system of a percentage linked to hockey-related revenue, instead of a system based on guaranteed dollars. In this case, the NHLPA agrees to go to 50 percent of HRR right from Year 1. However, a key line in the proposal bears underlying: "There are no guarantees or fixed targets, other than a requirement that, beginning with the second year of the Agreement, players’ share, expressed in dollars, may not fall below its value for the prior season." Essentially, it means the players are guaranteed to make no less in total dollars than the year before. The league won’t like that. The NHL have to be nuts to guarantee the players that their share of revenue will not go down in subsequent years. What if the fans revolt and attendance is down? What if the world economy takes a massive dump and people just stop spending money on the NHL? Let's say HRR is $3 billion next year (randomly selected #). In Year 1, you have a 50/50 split, so $1.5 billion each for owners and players. Let's say in Year 2, HRR drops to $2.2 billion for some reason. Under the NHLPA proposal, the players now have over 68 PERCENT of HRR b/c the CBA says that they can't make less than $1.5 billion. Also, the language makes no sense to me. If Year 2 has to be as high as Year 1, then does Year 3 have to be as high as Year 2? In other words, it could never drop below whatever number it was in Year 1. However, it could go up. The NHLPA is basically proposing a unilaterally fixed MINIMUM for the players. No way in hell the league agrees to that, and I don't blame them in this instance.

I checked out of this (depressing as all hell, yet informative) thread but assume that everybody is caught up to speed on the Michael Russo article indicating that the NHL has offered no better than a tiered reduction where their HRR share only gets down to 52.5%, and that's in the FIFTH year of the CBA. Primary blame still goes to the NHL, in my opinion, but if the NHL was willing to compromise on the "make whole" provision and the NHLPA couldn't find a way to get to 50% after a long phase-in....well, that starts to increase my anger toward the players. The NHLPA may still get to 50% at some point, but I'm a little sick of hearing what all the other leagues are doing with revenues percentage-wise. It's pretty safe to say that "Hockey Related Revenues" only apply to....hockey, and this league specifically. The manner in which they are calculated could be completely different than revenue calculations for other leagues, and the NHLPA has argued this very fact. But even more than that, the idea that the players HAVE to get to 50% because that's how it's done in other leagues makes no sense to me. In what other major sport did every existing player in the league agree to a 24% salary reduction AND lose an entire year's pay due to lockout? Might not the decision to set the HRR share at 57% have been a bargaining chip to partially compensate the players for that extreme financial burden. The counter-argument to that is "Well, fine, there were rollbacks, but what about the future?" But it wasn't just the salary rollbacks - it was the installation of an entire cap system that was also SUPPOSED to limit the amount of overall salaries paid. Had the cap not been installed (and the league continued to flourish due to the Canadian dollar, Winter Classic, etc.), don't you think the Red Wings, Bruins, Maple Leafs, and Rangers (among others) would have gotten up to $100 million payrolls? There's no amount revenues that could have kept hockey franchises in Phoenix, Florida, Atlanta (and now Dallas and others) financially viable because they still have to fill an 18,000 seat arena and pay for players in markets that don't have any freakin' fans! EIther the "have" teams agree to tow the "have not" teams (like the NFL does with places like Jacksonville), or you have to eliminate those teams. Simply taking a bigger chunk of the pie won't fix the underlying problem.

Drunk/impaired driving is wrong, make no doubt about it. But people get on their high horse about this issue like none other, when virtually EVERY person who has ever drank at a bar and then driven home has probably broken DWI laws to some degree. And if you don't drink, but use your smartphone while driving every once in awhile, don't try to tell me you're any better than a drunk driver, either. Sheahan did a bad thing, and the law will punish him for it to the extent sorted out by the system. If it happens again, we can start to talk about a pattern. But the way people "discard" people with a DWI as if they must be "alcoholics" bothers me, even if the underlying offense IS wrong. You don't have be an alcoholic or chronic screw-up to make a mistake.

Props to you for not holding Parise and Suter over Kenny's head, like so many other fans do. I don't see any reasonable viewing of that situation that would place the blame on Kenny. The Wings offered both of them tons of money, and they still opted for Minnesota. The Wild's $196 million payout to those two players was so extreme it's a partial cause of the ongoing lockout (particularly the "make whole" provision). AND, we don't even know how Minnesota will be adversely affected once a new CBA is passed (What if the Cap dropped to $59 million? What if the punitive measures proposed by the league against back diving contracts are actually passed?!). But to the question: "Has your opinion of Kenny changed?", I don't know how it couldn't have changed. Certainly, your opinion of any ONE-year deals (such as the Carolina deal to Semin, which was my only real "WTF?" moment this summer) has changed, given that there's a pretty good chance of that deal never coming to fruition. And all of the long-term deals we DIDN'T sign, well, who knows what the outcome will be of that. As of July 1st, these were some commonly held views regarding the upcoming CBA issues: There's no way the NHL allows any type of extended work stoppage, after what happened in 2004/05 Wholesale changes to the Cap structure and salary rollbacks are unlikely, given that the league made $3.3 BILLION last season The cancellation of the Winter Classic and, in fact, any games after January 1st was unthinkable Think about how much has changed since then. Whether or not Holland could "foresee" those issues, I really can't say if I'd be more comfortable now with a bonus-laden deal to Weber, Nash, Parise, or Suter...or if it would be better off to let this thing play out and address some more needs through trades and next offseason's FA class.

I highly doubt Fehr would put anything inflammatory or confidential in a memo to players that could easily make it into the public's hands. I didn't read anything that memo that was different than their public stance on the matter, or even what Fehr might have said directly to Bettman or Daly. The NHLPA has made it clear that they are not happy with the limitations on future player contracts, and that an immediate rollback to 50/50 sharing (and drop of the salary cap) is not going to work. I think the continued talks ARE encouraging. But Fehr is not going to really play ball until the owners make some type of concession on the existing contracts and the phase-in of the new distribution of HRR. We all hate the lockout, but there's this false causation I keep hearing from the fans, as if they're stuck in the 2004 logic and believe that you can fix teams like Phoenix, Dallas, etc. simply by throwing more of the money at all the owners. That didn't work in the '05 CBA, and it won't work now. The problem is in how league revenues are shared AMONGST the owners, and the fact that as soon as the new CBA is passed, the "have" GM's will figure out ways they can spend more than other teams to get an edge. Bettman isn't "learning" from this - Phoenix and the whole Western expansion is an albatross for this league, and he refuses to let the market correct it. You can also bet that he'll try to make up the money lost on this lockout with expansion fees (two new teams up to 32). People who think that the "greedy players" are the reason bad teams can't meet the cap floor without losing money are missing the whole point.