The Boston University hockey team will take the ice for its home opener in exactly one month.
You might want to find a seat – because it will be the only hockey in town.
At 11:59 p.m. Tuesday night, the National Hockey League as you know it disappeared into a black hole from which it may never recover. After months of arguing through the media while only getting further apart on the issues, the 30 NHL owners and the NHL Players Association can only agree on one thing.
“It’s not our fault.”
Starting this morning, hockey fans have lost their sport for what could be a very long time. The owners have decided to lock out the players until a settlement can be reached on the Collective Bargaining Agreement, or CBA. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no light at the end of this tunnel.
To understand the details of the collapse of the CBA, it helps to have a doctorate in economics – or at least that’s what the two sides would like you to think.
There are plenty of issues that have been thrown back and forth across a very large negotiating table, including a salary cap, an across-the-board pay cut and some form of revenue sharing (taking from the rich to give to the poor).
But when all the dust settles, there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides. The owners have known for nearly a decade (since the current CBA was signed in 1995, ending a 103-day lockout) that the league was driving itself into a wall. Owners were overpaying players as unproven rookies were signing off on absurdly huge contracts. Ticket prices continued to rise as television ratings declined to laughable decimal points.
Yet somehow, despite all the red in their bankbooks, the league felt the need to expand to such hockey hotbeds as Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tenn.; Anaheim, Calif.; and Phoenix, Ariz.
But with each side crying foul and trying to earn the sympathy of the sports public, there is just one victim in this debacle: the die-hard, life-long hockey fan. From all accounts, including the more honest members of both parties, this lockout will not last one week, one month or even one year – rather it could last several seasons. Instead of saying “negations are positive,” the lockout is prompting players to sign backup contracts with European teams and stars like 34-year-old Teemu Selanne to tell ESPN.com that “it’s a possibility” that North American fans have seen the last of him.
There should have been no other option in this dispute other than “get it done.” Hockey already serves as a bastard stepchild to the other three major sports, and unlike the baseball strike of 1994, there will be no Mark McGwire vs. Sammy Sosa battle to bring hockey back from the abyss.
Both sides missed out on a chance to be heroes to a fanbase that is arguably more dedicated than in any other sport. Sports fans have very long memories, and this is something that may never be forgiven.
