The NHL seemed like it had everything in place to possibly end the current lockout.
Nope.
Not even close.
Yet it still makes headlines everywhere that Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo has decided that he will play for Toronto.
Who cares?
It was funny watching NHL stars Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews and Shane Doan give their take on the Players' Union proposal to the National Hockey League owners last Wednesday.
Crosby said that the Union submitted not just one proposal, but three.
Toews said he's getting sick of playing this game within a game and Doan's line was the best.
He said it's like in a school yard confrontation between the bully and his victim.
"We did come to 50-50 as they proposed," said Doan in an interview with Rogers Sportsnet. "When people ask for money, they usually say 'give me your money or I'm going to hurt you. They don't say 'give me your money and I'm (still) going to hurt you."
That was Doan's way of describing what the Players' Union feels like amidst all these negotiations. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, all he could say was that all he can do is present 'the facts'.
There are zillions of dollars involved, 30 hockey teams/cities (plus their fans) and the NHL owners and the Players' Union are still a million miles apart.
Still.
Last Tuesday they appeared to be getting closer when the owners proposed something along the lines of a 50/50 share in revenue. Somewhere along the line that got severely butchered. According to the Score that Thursday night, members of the Union said those numbers were never quite so.
Now they are probably farther apart then they were a month ago. "None of the three variations of player share that they gave us even began to approach a 50-50 (revenue split)," insists Bettman, who added "either at all or for some long period of timeit's clear we're not speaking the same language."
The Union's rebuttal to that says that that is where the disagreement lies.
NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said that of the three proposals the Union submitted to the owners, indicates that the players "take a fixed amount of revenue, which would turn into an approximate 50-50 split over a five-year term". Fehr said the deal is based on the notion that league revenues "continued to grow".
Well, right now, nothing is going to grow because nobody is playing any hockey except for the minor leagues, Junior and senior league, and of course the beer leagues across the nation and/or the continent. The third approach taken by the Union sees a 50-50 split, as long as the league honoured all existing contracts at full value, a claim that deputy commissioner and Gary Bettman sidekick, Bill Daly later refuted in a press release, saying that it's not a 50-50 deal.
So what does all that mean?
Probably means somebody in the NHL doesn't know math. Or someone is trying to find every little loophole in the legal process in order to get what they want and screw the other side. I don't know why the owners are causing these problems. Without the players playing, nobody anywhere is making money.
It makes you feel bad for fans in some of those markets that aren't up there with the strongest (Montreal, Toronto, New York, Boston).
Monday night would have been the season opener in a towm that perhaps derserves its NHL hockey more than any other team, Winnipeg.
Instead, rinks in Edmonton and Winnipeg and all over the NHL landscape are dormant, the only action coming in a boardroom in Toronto, where owners and players met to do nothing whatsoever to end the lockout.
For all the emotion, excitement and sheer joy Winnipeg fans were feeling at this time last year as the Jets played their first exhibition games, there is nothing to talk about now but dreadfully dull economics that concern only billionaires and millionaires.
It's a harsh blow for the hockey fans of Winnipeg, who suffered without their team for 15 years before finally getting it back a year ago.
The first-year success of the team was beyond even owner Mark Chipman's wildest dreams.
Looks like TSN is going to have to find a new slogan to represent them. 'Hockey Lives Here' isn't going to cut it anymore. Unless you count reruns of the 1952 Stanley Cup final, Team Canada Rewind, or the movie, Slapshot
The video game NHL 13 has long been on the market on most of the major platforms.
It is only missing one key component. The mode that lets you play the role of the commissioner of the league.
It doesn't take long to play. You take out a hammer, smash the CD to bits, then like the pros, nobody gets to play any hockey this year.
Maybe Terrier and Millionaire ticket sales will see a huge boost in ticket sales and feed off the effect of thousands of hockey fans everywhere needing something, anything to satisfy their hockey craving. Ten dollars a ticket sounds pretty good right about now!
If there's anything you'd like to see covered by Game 7, please forward your suggestions to the Yorkton This Week sportsdesk by phone (306) 782-2465, or email jeff@yorkton this week.com. You only have six more days to do it!
