According to reports on yahoo sports,the NHL eliminated 16 more days from the regular-season schedule Monday, and if a deal with the players’ association isn’t reached soon the whole season could be lost.
The league wiped out all games through Dec. 30 in its latest round of cancellations.
Already, 422 regular-season games had been called off through Dec. 14 because of the lockout, and the latest cuts on Day 86 of the NHL shutdown claimed 104 more. The New Year’s Day Winter Classic and the All-Star game were canceled earlier.
At this rate there is a real chance that the rest of the regular season will be cancelled if a deal isn’t reached. This is a replay of the last lock out back in 2004. The owners led by Comissioner Gary Bettman were determined to get a deal that satisfied only them even if it meant the cancellation of the season.(which ended up happening) Now the same thing is happening again with Commissioner Gary Bettman leading the charge. It is becoming more evident that nothing short of a complete and total surrender by the players will get a deal done. This is howBettman has dealt with the union in the past and is continuing this again. This time though, the players have Donald Fehr, who has dealt with the owners in baseball and who ended striking a deal with the owners who shut down their sport, much like the Owners in hockey are doing now. This is high stakes game of chicken, and yes while it hurts the players being locked out, this hurts the Owners more. The sport already lags behind the big 3 of Football, Basketball and Baseball. But by have a second work stoppage in 8 years kills any moment this sport had enjoyed going forward after recovering from the previous work stoppage. Will this sport ever recover after this lockout? Will the fans return or will they find other sports to support whether it is NFL football, College football or NBA Basketball or evn lesser known but growing sports like MMA?
It seems to be a risk that Bettman and the NHL seem to be willing to take.
If these idiots who’ve shown the IQ of a wart hog can’t find a way how to split $2 .5 billion in revenues equally then their a$$ should be placed in a sling . Then again NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr is the same damn moron who held a similar position within the MLBPA (baseball players’ union) , when those oafs had their last labor dispute .
Hockey is now dead on arrival and not even a defibrillator will wake their dumb ##s up !
Tophatal …………..