No ice hockey?

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I couldn't see where this had been mentioned before so I thought I'd raise it here.

Is there really going to be no Stanley Cup this year? Sounds crazy. If this is the case, then whose fault is it? Who is it that is being too greedy?

You never get this sort of thing happening in normal hockey (except for a few heated arguments in the team that Rotku coached).

 

Nope, they have waited for the longest to come with a definite message but it has been evident for a long time.

I would say both parties are too greedy but the teams being the slightly greedier. I have got the impression that the players have gone to quite some length to reach a compromise but the clubs have refused them.

It is nice for Swedish hockey cause we have a bunch of NHL players in our league now as do many of the European leagues.

 

No Stanley Cup this year. I think the radio station I was listening to said it was the first time this happened since 1919 or sometime way back. (I was only half listening.)

I think the players accepted the salary cap at the last minute, but it was already too late. If they had agreed to that a few months earlier, there might have been hockey played today.

Hopefully they won't take until next fall to settle this.

 

I guess neither party wanted to be seen to be the ones who 'gave in'.

 

No freaking way. Swedish hockey is crap now, and imagine how it will be in five years if this doesn't solve. Teams that in the beginning didn't buy all these fancy guys from the NHL and instead put their money into the youth are suffering terribly right now, such as the former years last winners, HV 71. Plus, the hockey is being too NHL-like now, unsuprisingly, and IMHO, it is much more boring to watch than the good ol' Swedish hockey I've been enjoying for years.

 

I totally blame the players. Take Mark Messier for example. At most last year he played 82 games. Now, he plays roughly every third day, for about a 3 hour period, and made something like ten million dollars. Back in the 50's they played for the game, not the millions of dollars! If they wanted to play, they'd accept anything that the league offered them.

 

What about that freaky guy who is somehow both a player AND an owner? Did he have to have some tough negotiations with himself, before deciding the offer was both not enough AND too much at the same time?

 

You mean Mario Lemieux? Yeah, he keeps sending himself hate mail.

@ Caleb - I sympathise. If European teams are training their players to play like the NHL, then "boring" is right. I haven't paid much attention to hockey for 15-20 years, because it's just too dull.

The problem is that the players are greedy, but the owners need to be protected from themselves. They're both to blame.

 

But really, this can be said for any major sporting league in North America. Once you hit the pros, people feel the need to be greedy.

What we need are BASEketball style rules for trading and player salaries. I think that that would work.

 

There was a solution there, but both sides rejected it for different reasons. If they'd have gone for a luxury tax system where the points that it kicks in linked to revenue projections, this could have been settled. The owners were Hell bent on a Hard cap, and the players wanted to corner the owners on fixed numbers, so neither side could see this...

I think that they should fire Bettman and Goodenow. Shooting them, though tempting, is excessive. but tell the replacements that if they haven't got anything by the draft, they're fired too.

 

Yeah its just a slower, watered down version of Hurling played on ice!