Please let NHL Hockey die the ignominious death it so deserves. There’s no sport where the men are a bunch of stick wielding sissies bent upon seeing who can get in the best cheap shot. Actually it would be great if they started up a women’s pro hockey league, the women Olympic hockey players play the best hockey because they actually play hockey instead of the cheap shot game with the stick.

Bye Bye NHL!!!

if you’re all done with hockey, why you still checking the status of the lockout on this site? and not only are you checking the status, you’re also reading the comments.

The players were obviously going to start at a 57/43 split, so the owners offer was the complete opposit… 43/57 in favor of the owners. Whats the middle ground? 50/50, which is where everyone expected the sides to end up. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable first offer then. If the owners had offered a 50/50 split, or anything close, right off the bat the players would have refocused the middle ground much higher.

In fact, the only one who has nothing to lose, and might actually gain from the lockout, is on the players side… and thats Fehr.

If you like hockey, you’ll watch hockey and the NHL will still have by far the best product once the lockout ends. So a lot of fans can piss and moan about being “done with the NHL”, but mark my words… most will be tuned in when that first puck drops, and ratings will still be just as high as they were.

In the business world, the only thing either side respects is money… and the long term money isn’t going anywhere. Thus the owners and players don’t have to put much thought into how the fans feel.

“I think the only thing I can say is it’s a first offer,” Schneider told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s a starting point. We’re going to consider it and figure out what our counter proposal is going to be. Yes, it is a little shocking when you first look at it but, again, that’s how negotiations work. You aim high and then try to move back from there.”

Need we say more ? In addition to being the “second best” goaltender in the league, Schneider also shows himself to be an extremely intelligent and thoughtful person. Way to go Cory ! Way to show them that you “know” what you’re talking about !

ps: here again are the current “top” goalies in the NHL today …

1) Jonathan Quick
2) Cory Schneider
3) Henrik Lundqvist
4) Ryan Miller
5) Carey Price

28) Mikka Kiprusoff
29) Roberto Luongo
30) Ilya Bryzgalov

- From 43% plus all the other negatives in contracting rights and salary rollbacks.
- To 50% plus all the other negatives in contracting rights and a ‘make whole’ provision the players pay to themselves.
- To 50% plus all the other negatives in contracting rights but the owners pay the make whole initially.

Did he really expect the players would go from 57% (actually 54% before the clause kicked in about revenues being over the expected threshold and bumped it up 3% – the owners signed off on that in the last lockout) and advantages in contracting in exchange for a 24% rollback and a salary cap only to:
- Go 50/50 on HRR
- Lose pretty much all contracting rights they gained last time
- And have the cap come down once again and restrict future contracts

But hey, at least the NHL is willing to pay for the first little while to honour those contracts they signed that would have been rolled back otherwise – not that they’ll ‘make whole’ Parise, Suter and Weber’s deals all the way until they are completed in 13/14 years.

These people can read – if it’s not on this site, it’s in their own local papers, news feeds or email – they know exactly how the fans feel how damaging this lockout is, so when I read about how upset or how sad these guys are I become even more disgusted with the complete lack of respect to the fans that put money in their pockets.