Electrophile

No. He's retired, it's over.

Yeah, I can't wait for the Red Wings to get swept in the Stanley Cup Finals by a team that is sub-.500 for the season either. Good times, my man. Good times.

No hockey. I wouldn't trust these people to walk into a room with only one door and remember how to get back out again.

Does anyone care about hockey anymore? I've found I don't really miss it, and I didn't think I'd feel that way. All of these clowns have so completely soured the sport for me, if it comes back, I won't watch it. I'll follow the games to some extent here on LGW, but I sure as hell won't go out of my way for it. I did the same thing after the MLB strike in 1994, and it took quite a long time to re-ignite my love for baseball. Grown adults, all making a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge sum of money well beyond that of their fans, arguing over who should get more money. PATHETIC.

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.

I'd rather Brooklyn get their baseball team back instead of a hockey team. In terms of logistics it makes sense; Brooklyn in the most populated borough, has train connections to Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx AND bridge connection to Staten Island.....if more people can get to the games, more people will go to the games. Provided the product is good and the league is back to work by then.

$1 = 10 dimes $250,000 = 2,500,000 dimes

I'm glad Nick retired when he did. If he had been planning on coming back for one more year, and he ended up missing most if not all of this season, it wouldn't have been too pretty. As for my own feelings about hockey when it comes back.....I'll always root for the Red Wings to win, and I'll always want Wings players to succeed at their highest levels, but the league itself can suck boiled eggs. I'll post here still, but I won't watch a single game, listen to a single game, or spend even one dollar on NHL merchandise. To hell with them. It took a long time for baseball to win me back after the strike in 1994, and this is the 3rd NHL lockout that's happened in the last 20 years. There's absolutely no guarantee it won't happen again in another 5 or 6 years. I'm personally getting tired of being made to feel like my fandom doesn't matter, and that I'll just dumbly follow the league wherever it goes, no matter what it does. Sorry, you've s*** the bed for the last time.

Everyone involved in this entire scenario can kiss my ass. Especially Gary Bettman.

There are several baseball teams that could stand to follow that same logic, too. So it's not just an issue in hockey. That's part of why I've always believed if you're going to install a salary cap, you need to also install a floor. Otherwise, if you tell teams you can only spend.....$90 million dollars (for example), unless you also tell them they have to spend at least 80% of that (for example), or $72 million, they'll spend the absolute bare-bones minimum they can get away with, and pocket the revenue sharing and write off losses, as Harold pointed out. Off-topic, but doesn't the NFL have a salary floor of 80% of the cap?

The longer this goes on, the less confident I am that this will be resolved. Which is going to royally piss me off.

I've seen several people say that if the league does lockout, it's not Bettman's fault, it's the owners' fault. To a degree, I agree with that. However, three work stoppages in less than 20 years? SOMEONE has to lose their job for that. If what some of you have said is true, and he's just a mouthpiece for the owners, he's not a very good commissioner, now is he? He may not be directly at fault for what's going on, but his inept leadership, re: his relationship with the owners', needs to be dealt with and if that means bye bye Bettman, then so be it.

If the season is locked out, Bettman should lose his job. Plain and simple. That would be the 3rd work stoppage during his tenure, which would effectively kill the sport dead in the United States. It's already swimming against the tide in relation to baseball, basketball, and football, and if the season is shortened by any significant duration (half or more), there's no point in anyone aside from the die hards to continue watching. The die hards are already by my guesstimate, 3/4ths of the audience anyway. That 1/4 that are "casual observers" will be gone, and it won't matter. So Bettman better hope there isn't a lockout, or else he can kiss his job goodbye. In the event he does get a Shanaban levied on him, is there anyone who can act as interim commish until another one is appointed/elected/promoted?

That's incredibly tacky, and not something I would have suspected coming from something affiliated with Mike Ilitch and his family. I'd say give them a set period of time to get back to you, and if they don't, donate the money to the Children's Hospital. Stick with them from now on, since they have no problem accepting donations from people who want to help them.

If Scotty can coach, Steve can play. Come on Captain, take a couple shifts, give the crowd a thrill.

This is how I feel, basically. I said in the other thread that I thought we were "comfortably mediocre", meaning we weren't going to be #1, but we weren't going to be dead last either. I think for this team as presently constructed to make the playoffs and stay in the playoffs, they're going to have to overperform, and I don't know if they can.

I don't think we're going to go 0-82 this season, but I also don't think we're making the playoffs, either. I think we're going to be comfortably mediocre, never excelling, but never truly sucking either. The team has too many holes, some of which weren't filled adequately. We didn't get Parise or Suter which sucks, but that's life. The reason I don't think we're going to do that well this year has little to do with anything that happened specifically this year, aside from Lidstrom's retirement, but rather has to do with Holland not doing much of anything to improve the team over the last 4 seasons. The chickens always come home to roost, and this is our year, it would seem. Don't take this post as a sign I'm turning my back on the team, or jumping off the bandwagon or whatever else it is you crazy kids like to throw around in an effort to appear morally superior to other fans. I'm just calling it like I see it, and what I see isn't that great.

When do we sit back and objectively say hey, this team is screwed? Because I feel we're nearing that point.

I understand people are disappointed we didn't land either of these two players, but too many of you are absolutely overreacting. We didn't sign a couple of hockey players, it's not like the President was just shot. The amount of teeth-gnashing, wailing, hair-pulling, and manic frenzy is disproportionate to the event. Everyone just calm the hell down.

I don't think he wants to quit managing the Yankees, but you never know.

Who cares where either of them are from? They want to get paid. They're allowed to do that. Get over it.

Okay, time for us all to move on. Focus on who we do have.

Time to sh*t or get off the pot. Either you want to play here or you don't. Same goes for Parise. We're the Detroit Red Wings, not some neophyte hockey club. Our reputation precedes us.

*ahem*

The Red Wings are probably a good 12 hrs away from standing outside Suter's house holding a boombox over their heads that's blaring In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel.