I would bet a large portion of the players and owners want to get this over with. They all lose so much the longer it goes on but the individuals with the least overall to lose on both the owners and players sides seem to be driving the ship.... into a reef.... of lost profits.
These are the ones who have already have made the big bucks so they wait until the weakest link can take no more. It's dirty and a poor promotion for the league on a whole since in the near future it will be seen as less stable.... That is surely a great way to grow a market.
I can understand where the owners may feel they are paying the "employees" too much. Fair enough. Fact is the teams that want to win bad enough and can afford to do so will pay what they need to so they can win at all costs, right? Winning is good for business.
Lockouts are bad for business and poor markets are bad for business. I do not doubt there are exceptional fans in every "non typical" hockey market. But teams need to have some legitimacy and many in the NHL seem to lack it.
I'm sure the failing markets have their hardcore fans, but I live in a thriving Canucks market and I cheer for the Flyers. Point being that hockey fans will find a legit team to cheer for even if they exist across the country. Many of the markets that seem to be dragging overall profits down are not in hockey hyped locations. I've never seen the passion in a Carolina, Tampa, Columbus crowd etc. so I won't presume there is no potential there, but I would bet the smart money that they are not the ideal places to make a hockey profit.
The NHL isn't as poor as I think they want us to believe, they just don't want to share among themselves without overall cuts so this may unfortunately last a while.
At this point I urge you all to get more involved with the game at your home town level. Play hockey, take your kids out to skate, visit your minor league team (yeah, it may be kind of shoddy) it's all good fun. F$%k the fat cats!
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10 team full keeper: 4C/LW/RW,6D,2G,5BN
G,A,P,+/-,PIM,SOG,GWG,PPP,SHP,Hit,Blk,FOW
W,GAA,SV,SV%,SHO
C- Giroux,Hanzal,M.Richards,J.Staal
LW- Lupul,JVR,Tlusty,Zetterberg
RW- Backes,Clarkson,Havlat,Kessel
D- Bogosian,Carlson,Enstrom,Kulikov,Markov,Yandle
G- Miller,Hiller,Crawford
BN- Kuba,Ruutu,Robidas,McDonald
Prospects- Armia, Connolly, Couturier, Etem, Forsberg, Girgensons, Huberdeau, Kucherov, Nyquist, Okposo, K.Palmieri, Stransky, Toffoli, Barberio, Gardiner, Gormley, Josi, Marincin, Moore, Morrow, Savard, Vatanen, Allen, Bernier, Campbell, Fasth, Hackett, Mrazek
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