It's officially official, no NHL

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=1992793

greedy bastards!

Canada is now officially closed.

WGAS.

If only it was the NBA.....

I am not a HUGE NHL fan, but there is nothing better in sporst than playoff hockey. Of all the professional sport leagues, I never, EVER would have imagined that NHL would have the dubious distinction of being the first league to cancel an entire season. It's really sad, not for the millionaire players or the billionaire owners, but for those who depend on it and who are NOT making milliions (concession stand workers, young players, and so on).

Oh well... let's hope they work something out for next season.

Juan

Originally Posted by Plaz

WGAS.

When's the next baseball strike scheduled?

I wore my fave RedWing's hat today, chasing the ball for 36 holes...I jes'
smelled that the s hit was gonna hit the fan. The acrimony and lack of
real leadership, on both sides, should be a biz case study.

Hockey is almost a 2nd tier pro sport for many of US sports leerers, but
it is a sad day for the hat to be tossed in.

None of us fans will/should lose any sleep over the calumny filled fiasco,
but it is a ridiculous series of events that led to this denouement.

Pro sports, like many aspects of biz, has gone beyond any "normal"
daily activity and moved on to a fantasy land of outlandish egos,
arm wrestling over billions.

Originally Posted by MrAirbags

I certainly don't, but I respect the fact that there are dozens of hockey fans globally.

Originally Posted by ·clyde·

When's the next baseball strike scheduled?

That's different. That's not funny.

Originally Posted by WILLIA///M

Canada is now officially closed.

Haha...

wont happen, with the veritable stars of Lebron James and...well they only need one star to be more fun to watch than NHL.

XD! Hockey Hate!
-ELmO

Originally Posted by GUINNESS

greedy bastards!

Couldn't agree more. Living in a country where people live, eat, breathe hockey, I've just realized that I don't miss hockey that much after all. This is quite a revelation.....there is really life outside of hockey.

So the only other year when the NHL was cancelled outright was way back in 1919 due to the Spanish flu.

So what's the excuse this time in 2005??? GREED!

I could care less which side of the table you're sitting on with this issue, both sides (owners and players/union) are losers!

Hockey will suffer (especially in this country) for many years because of this outrage.

Originally Posted by DougDogs

I thought just the finals were canceled in 1919, not the season

DD: You are Correctomundo per the NewYawkTimes:

"The Stanley Cup will not be awarded for the first time since 1919, when the championship round was canceled because of a flu epidemic."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/sp.../17hockey.html

BR,md

Originally Posted by DougDogs

I thought just the finals were canceled in 1919, not the season

Thanks for the correction.

But, interesting read from Vecsey in the NewYawkTimes...
(A related article said the latest, last ditch arm wrestle talks have broken off, fwiw.)

A lotta foolish pride and egos at work. From my seat in row Z of the Peanut Galley, we need an NHL season that starts in mid-March at best, and goes through July?, like we need more televised soccer in the USA, but WTFDIK?!
BR, Ol'UncMotor


February 20, 2005
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
Cancellation of Season Shouldn’t Be Wake-Up Call
By GEORGE VECSEY

THERE was something touching about the late and apparently futile flurry by grown men with stitch marks on their faces.

It was like a game of pond hockey after dark, with their parents shouting for them to come home: no more playing, supper is ready, but the players wanted to be out in the night air, playing by the sound of the puck, the whoosh of the skates, playing by feel, just wanting to play.

They waited too long, however. The pond had obstacles they should have cleared up while there was still daylight. The National Hockey League players could not overcome months of failed negotiations.

The sides met for more than six hours yesterday in New York, and afterward Bill Daly, the league's executive vice president and chief legal officer, said "significant differences" remained. Considering the season has already been called off, it does not sound as if we will see the Stanley Cup late this spring.

Now the question is: What took the players so long to get involved? Why couldn't their need to ply their trade, play their game, have kicked in two weeks or four weeks or six weeks ago? Why did they need N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman to call off the season and their own union representative, Bob Goodenow, to accept it glumly before they launched into action?

Somehow, that public act by the league caught the players' attention, the way a good, hard, legal cross-check clears the mind of a player. Thanks, I needed that. More than the lawyers, more than the league suits, the players suddenly seemed to sense they didn't want a year of shame, a year with no hockey, a year without the Stanley Cup. Or a year without paychecks.

If there is any hopeful sign, it is that Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, the two great players of the recent generation, were part of the negotiations yesterday and issued vaguely hopeful statements afterward.

"Mario and I were happy to be part of the process and everyone seemed to work very hard together," Gretzky said in a statement on the league's Web site, nhl.com. "We had a constructive meeting and we only hope they will continue meeting for the betterment of the N.H.L. and its fans."

Gretzky is now the managing partner of the Phoenix Coyotes, and Lemieux is a player-owner for the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were reacting like athletes, who always feel they can make something happen in the closing seconds by mucking in the corner, kicking the puck loose toward the goal.

Lemieux and Gretzky have held the Stanley Cup over their heads. They have sunk their money into the sport they love. They reacted as players. They reacted as management. They gave their sport, their business, at least a fighting chance, but it sounds as if the players waited too long.

They left the negotiations to Bettman and Goodenow, the executive director of the N.H.L. Players' Association. Early last week, the union apparently offered to agree to a $49 million salary cap and the league offered $42.5 million. How hard would it have been to split the difference at $45 million?

Isn't that what adults do? But they couldn't get it done yesterday, which only confirms that the owners have been willing all along to take a full year off just to break the players.

Watching the sides teeter into a supposed cancellation of the season is enough to convince people that hockey has serious difficulties. With television ratings and income heading downward, the players may very well have too high a salary base. Whose fault is that? The owners are the ones who compete with one another by throwing around huge salaries. Now they want protection from themselves.

In the three other major North American team sports, the owners and the players have already accepted artificial ceilings of one sort or another. What took these hockey people so long?

Were the players so rich and comfortable that they could afford to play hockey in Europe or golf in the Sun Belt while Goodenow and Bettman lumbered around like two hockey goons pulling the shirts over their heads?

"I was really upset with the way it ended," Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames was quoted as saying Friday by The Canadian Press. He added, "I understand that a few million is a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, in a $2.1 billion business and getting everyone past their principles, I would love for this to get done."

It's too bad it took the players so long to remember this is a game they love to play, but which, unlike pond hockey, pays them an amazing living, when they don't let the suits mess it up in their name.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/sp.../20vecsey.html



Gretzky and Lemieux can't save it, either: article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/sp.../20hockey.html

As of yesterday, I was a little optimistic to see Gretzky and Lemieux getting togther. But it was just that.....wishful thinking.

Now it really IS over!