NHL

Well, it's official. The lockout will start tomorrow. I cannot believe this. The players are just selfish and wrong. They want to make millions because other sports' athletes make millions...but there's just not a market to support that. I mean, the freaking WNBA pulled better television ratings than this year's Stanley Cup Finals. That's laughable. Whom do the players think will pay them to play hockey now? Europe? The revived WHL? Original Stars League? Sure, some players will get the chance, but those three leagues combined cannot hold all the NHL players. Many will lose work altogether, and wind up next to Kurt Warner stocking shelves at the A & P.

-Scott Walker said he's doing it for the younger generations, like the Adam Halls of the world. Well if that's the case, then how is he helping them? By forcing them into non-hockey work with a 30K-a-year job?

-The last time there was no Stanley Cup awarded was in 1919, when the finals series was stopped for a Spanish influenza epidemic...not for a lockout.

-The NHL's average salary has risen from $733,000 at the time of the last lockout to $1,830,126 last season, according to the NHL players' association. While NHL revenue rose from $732 million in 1993-94 to $1.996 billion in 2002-3, the league says that player costs have increased from 57 percent of revenue to 75 percent over that period.

The fundamental problem is that the players dispute (refuse to believe) the league's numbers. The league says that when owners say they're losing money on hockey that they are lying. For instance, Craig Leopold owns the Preds, and when he reports cost and revenue to the league, he reports Nashville Predators cost and revenue. Now it just so happens that Leopold also owns the management company which oversees the Gaylord Entertainment Center (Powers Management). Powers Management has costs and revenues related to the GEC that have nothing to do with hockey, such as concerts, the circus, conventions, etc. Now a lot of the owners have this situation set up, where they manage the arena with a second company. The players union wants all that revenue from ancillary events held at the arena to be counted as hockey revenue. And the owners only want to count hockey revenue as hockey revenue.

Essentially this is like the players saying that because an owner is rich from something completely unrelated to hockey that he should accept a hockey CBA that loses him money. That's like saying that if I own a Pizza Hut franchise and also own a cleaning service, that I should willingly lose money by having to pay the cleaning people too much because my pizza business is making a profit. Last I checked, in the U.S. free market economy, people who own businesses strive to make money. The players want to penalize Craig Leopold and other owners for being smart and savvy businessmen...for owning two companies. Ridiculous. This is why I hate unions. There's no logic there, because they're only seeing dollar signs. They see Leopold and the others making profits as individuals and think that their one money-losing business is then making money. They're fourth graders in this thought process. This infuriates me. And it's the crux of the NHLPA's problem with the discussions. They think the owners are reporting fake numbers because the owners report hockey numbers and not Celine Dion numbers along with Barnum and Bailey's numbers along with Future Republicans of America numbers. He owns two separate companies!!!

So they'll force a lockout and blame it on the owners. They want to keep making salaries they're making now...but their forcing a lockout that ensures none of them will make that much...because no other league can pay them even as much as the NHL would under a salary cap. They'd rather not play hockey and be poor than "let the owners win." They only want to play for a fantasy, utopian NHL, and quite frankly, that's never going to exist. Players will never make more or the same as this year....never, hence the owners tough stance. The players think they can bully the owners into ponying up more dough, but it won't happen...ever. The marketplace simply can't afford it. The ratings are down, attendance is down...it's a football-first fan-base, and the players need to accept it. They'll never sign Peyton Manning contracts, but they think they will just by being athletes. That's why we'll have no hockey this year. And then we'll likely lose our team. And then I guess I'll have to move to Toronto.

So go on Scott Walker. Take your ego and your greed and go take a flying leap. I'm pissed. And I'll remember this when we finally get hockey back. You'll be on my list of people to boo.