I agree. I just went through a similar situation with my line of work. After two years of fruitless negotiations and over a year of work without a contract, employees begrudgingly accepted a deal only to learn after signing it, that certain key components, as explained during the negotiation process, were fabricated. Under the price of the new plan, healthcare has gone up and will continue to do so annually, although our salary will not. The irony is this company made record profits and gave its new CEO a raise of 17M after being on the job for months during a strike while using the media to misinform the public that it could not afford to maintain the healthcare provision and the salary its employees wanted to retain.

For the sake of the now and the future, the players have to stick together. Our union's current situation has the markings of a union that will be broken with there being three divisions: 1) Newer hires who have no layoff protection. 2) Middle tenure with layoff protection, fighting for their future pensions 3) Longer tenure employees fighting for their pensions while receiving poor packages/offers to leave now.

The bottomline is greed. Unlike the players, if something were to happen, work isn't as easy for me to find as it is for them. With that said, what they do make is peanuts on the dollar compared to what the owners who will have a far greater tenure.

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League: Yahoo 20 Team Dynasty, H2H (4C, 8W, 6D, 1G)
Cats: +/-, FOW, A, G, GWG, PPP, SHP, SOG, S, SPct, W, GAA

C: Kopitar,Nyquist,J.Staal,Strome
W: Atkinson,Benn,Brunner,Huberdeau
Iginla,Kessel,Seguin,Selanne
D: Beaulieu,DeKeyser,Despres,D.Hamilton,Leopold,Salo
G: M.A.Fleury
Bench: B.Bennett,B.Gordon,Petrovic,Stalberg - J.Bernier, J.Howard
Prospects: Andrighetto,V.Arvidsson,G.Carey,Filatov,Kabanov,Kuhnhackl,Omark,R.Schwartz
Shalunov,Stransky
Clendening,Deslauriers,Gauthier-Leduc,J.Morrow,R.Murphy,Postma,Reilly -- P.Bartosak,N.Lundstrom,J.Olkinuora,A.Wilcox

Why would the NHL ever want to fully break the union? Fact is the NHL benefits greatly from union. Without the union there could be no salary cap, no RFA/UFA-system, no draft, no maximum player salaries etc. NHL would be facing antitrust lawsuits. I don't see what they could gain by getting rid of NHLPA.

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UHL Pittsburgh Penguins

24 Team Fantrax Salary Cap H2H Dynasty League Daily
G, A, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, GWG, SOG, Hits, Blks, FOW
W, GAA, SV, SV%, SO
23 Man Roster - 3C, 3LW, 3RW, 3F, 6D, 1G, 4BN, 4IR
27 Man Minor Team

C- Tavares, Stepan, Hodgson, Shaw, Bjugstad
LW- Ryan, Perron, Downie, Killorn, Paajarvi
RW- Wheeler, Simmonds, Coyle, Frattin, Rinaldo
D- Schultz, JJ, Bogosian, EJ, Josi, Cowen, Muzzin
G- Lehtonen

F: Granlund, Silfverberg, Jensen, Dalpe, Bowman, Knight, Fasth, JAM, O'Dell
D: Beaulieu, Koekkoek, Gelinas, Pysyk, McCabe, Irwin, Gryba
G: Nilsson, Poulin, Nilstorp, Ramo, Berra, Brossoit, C.Gibson

How are the owners being ruthless? They're looking for similar deal as NFL, NBA and MLB. In not one of those leagues do the players get even close to 57% of revenues. 50/50 share of revenues is just fair and looking for it isn't ruthless. Locking the players out to get that? Well, what other choice do they have? Nothing.

Last time the owners fought to get a salary cap and player salaries linked to revenues. Now the players have been trying to be break that linkage. How about that for ruthlessness? A full season was already lost for that so what good does it do to present offers with de-linkage? I can't side with the players when they're doing that. That doesn't get them anywhere close to get a deal done. Oh and while last time owners got a deal they wanted, make no mistake in the end it benefited the players even more.

It's easy to say that but where do you find those billionaires? It's not like there's prospective owners lining up to buy current NHL-franchises either. Also if you find billionaires willing to put up all the money and work into establishing new league, do you think they'd give up 57% of the revenue to players?

NHL will have no problem getting fans back. It may take a few years to get back to where they were during last year but they'll get there eventually.

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UHL Pittsburgh Penguins

24 Team Fantrax Salary Cap H2H Dynasty League Daily
G, A, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, GWG, SOG, Hits, Blks, FOW
W, GAA, SV, SV%, SO
23 Man Roster - 3C, 3LW, 3RW, 3F, 6D, 1G, 4BN, 4IR
27 Man Minor Team

C- Tavares, Stepan, Hodgson, Shaw, Bjugstad
LW- Ryan, Perron, Downie, Killorn, Paajarvi
RW- Wheeler, Simmonds, Coyle, Frattin, Rinaldo
D- Schultz, JJ, Bogosian, EJ, Josi, Cowen, Muzzin
G- Lehtonen

F: Granlund, Silfverberg, Jensen, Dalpe, Bowman, Knight, Fasth, JAM, O'Dell
D: Beaulieu, Koekkoek, Gelinas, Pysyk, McCabe, Irwin, Gryba
G: Nilsson, Poulin, Nilstorp, Ramo, Berra, Brossoit, C.Gibson

Hey man, it's your loss if you wanna but garbage fake jerseys.

You've been brainwashed by the players, son.

My mistake in saying the NHL as a whole. That said the ones who appear to be steering this ship, the big market, mega deep pocket titans, want the union broken. They may be the minority in terms of numbers, but they wield all the clout. Yes, the NHL as a whole benefits from the NHLPA in the areas you mention, but this small cabal doesn't care.

They're willing to sink this ship just to get their way, the overall success be damned. For all their intelligence in running their other business interests and making money, they only look at the small picture in this, which is just their franchise.

If they break the union they can remove all these things they didn't want last time. If that means the small market clubs can't compete or can't survive, as far as these owners are concerned good riddance. Sort of reminds me of a country club that has a small group of old money families that look down their noses at the new money riff raff. They don't want them around, they resent them coming in and trying to influence events, and will do what they can to put them back in their place, so to speak.

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You know it's going to be a good day when you open up your mailbox and find out the previous tenant was a playboy subscriber

Dallas Stars Team Coverage
Dallas Stars Prospects Coverage
Friday Night Studs And Duds
Common Sewer of good beer

So there is one thread about the players being in the dark about what their representative is doing and there is another thread about the owners potentially getting fed up with what their representative is doing.

It's like a monkey shit fight at the zoo, only without the organization, productivity and entertainment value.

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Okay, so maybe nobody likes a cynic, but everybody f**king hates those perky optimists!

... and anyway, I make a damn good cynic.

Yes, but with 200% more shit being flung. Not sure if their finger painting the conference room wall with it though.

__________________
You know it's going to be a good day when you open up your mailbox and find out the previous tenant was a playboy subscriber

Dallas Stars Team Coverage
Dallas Stars Prospects Coverage
Friday Night Studs And Duds
Common Sewer of good beer

I really can't see that being a case. The deep pocket owners benefit from these smaller teams too and couldn't operate as succesfully without them IMO. You take away the union and all the benefits of collective bargaining (salary cap, draft etc.) and there isn't many teams that succesfully operate with teams like Toronto, Rangers and Montreal. Those teams could then acquire all the players they want and salaries would go through the roof. That would kill 10 or 20 teams almost instantly. The NHL wouldn't be as succesful with a smaller number of teams and no union. Salaries would skyrocket (players took over 70% before salary cap and would now take more), a lot of teams couldn't compete without draft, because of smaller number of teams there'd be less games and thus less revenue from ticket sales, money from TV-deals could become smaller etc.

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UHL Pittsburgh Penguins

24 Team Fantrax Salary Cap H2H Dynasty League Daily
G, A, +/-, PIM, PPP, SHP, GWG, SOG, Hits, Blks, FOW
W, GAA, SV, SV%, SO
23 Man Roster - 3C, 3LW, 3RW, 3F, 6D, 1G, 4BN, 4IR
27 Man Minor Team

C- Tavares, Stepan, Hodgson, Shaw, Bjugstad
LW- Ryan, Perron, Downie, Killorn, Paajarvi
RW- Wheeler, Simmonds, Coyle, Frattin, Rinaldo
D- Schultz, JJ, Bogosian, EJ, Josi, Cowen, Muzzin
G- Lehtonen

F: Granlund, Silfverberg, Jensen, Dalpe, Bowman, Knight, Fasth, JAM, O'Dell
D: Beaulieu, Koekkoek, Gelinas, Pysyk, McCabe, Irwin, Gryba
G: Nilsson, Poulin, Nilstorp, Ramo, Berra, Brossoit, C.Gibson

I read this article today, it's largely speculative but an interesting read...it basically suggests that the owners are souring on Bettman's stubborn ******* approach to the whole process. The interesting part for me was to learn that that little imp can effectively block the will of the owners unless a supermajority oppose him. I really can't fathom why they haven't got rid of him

http://mobile.philly.com/sports/?wss...9281&viewAll=y

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Thats me on the street with a violin under my chin, playing with a grin, singing gibberish.





P=1 DPts=1.2 +/-=.32 PIM=.08 PPP=.4 SHP=.6 S=.015 Blk=.2 Hit=.08
W=2 OTL=.8 GA=-.64 SV=.08 SO=3

Pro (23 keep 17)
C- Filppula,Turris,Stastny,Backstrom
D-Boyle,MDZ,Karlsson,Robidas,Goligoski,Schenn,Seiden berg
G-Anderson,Hiller,Rinne
LW-Malone,Parise,Rolston,Eriksson,Ruutu
RW-Alfredsson,Callahan,Setoguchi,Brown,Ryder,Vrbata

Farm (9 keep all, max 200 GP, 100 Goalies)
Colborne,Leblanc,Loktionov,Perreault,Tangradi,Blum ,Poulin,Markstrom

In honour of this lock-out fiasco I have changed my sig pic. I'll change it back to something nice when we get the NHL back.

__________________
Okay, so maybe nobody likes a cynic, but everybody f**king hates those perky optimists!

... and anyway, I make a damn good cynic.