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NHL set to scrap troubled season

MacNut said:
Don't blame Bettman for the loss of the season, If the union agrees to a salary cap this hole thing would end. This could very well last into next season and the owners will offer even less. Don't forget the real victims of all this the Referees who have nothing to fall back on.
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I do think though that Bettman will end up with a good deal of the blame. Really I think some of it is rightly so, but the other thing of it is Bettman alone definitely didn't come up with the terms the NHL has right now, I think a lot of it has to do with the individual team franchise owners. To me the most frustrating part of this whole thing is I don't beleive there really is a true and clean cut 'bad guy' in this situation- quite a few NHL teams were losing money but on the flipside what the league is asking is I think too big of a pill to swallow all at once for the players. Changing the way the game is played to me doesn't really seem right, but in the intrest of countering for the changes in how the players have changed, and they have, is necessary. I don't think fighting is such a big deal, but at the same time every other major pro sport doesn't allow brawls, why should hockey players be special? And as for making the game 'flow' better, all I can say is the answer lies in adopting the olympic sized ice surface. More room to skate means more skating, more room to pass means more passing, more room to shoot means more shooting, more space per player means less jersey grabbing- isn't this exactly what they're after? Sure, the owners may have to fork it out, but if the league were to have a gradual program of changing it over it wouldn't be so painful, and if the players have to sacrifice so should they.
Really the bottom line of this whole thing is they are ruining the reputation and image of one of the greatest sports ever played, if you listen to my opinion. They've alienated an entire audience and potential audience, maybe even potential athletes, and by they I mean the whole organization players and owners. What's gonna fix this is to sit down and come up with a completely new system, 'soft' luxury-tax based salary caps and a shorter, quicker season, and lastly opening up the game and making hockey a standardized sport and playing on the 'big ice'.
edit-
Also keep in mind all the jobs lost over this- all the people employed by the players, all the people employed by the teams, by the rinks, the local businesses near the rinks, the businesses that do merchandizing, equipment manufacturers, and finally the jobs of the non-NHL players being displaced by NHLers looking for a job.
 
ltgator333 said:
I don't think fighting is such a big deal, but at the same time every other major pro sport doesn't allow brawls, why should hockey players be special?
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Ever seen a certain Pistons-Pacers game?
 
A deadline has been set for 11:00am est Wednesday morning for the season to be officially canceled.
 
Not to jump ahead with the deadline still 12 hrs away but if the season is cancelled and no agreement is reached in the ensuing months, the owners will bring in their own players next year. What I find interesting is that statements have been made by some non-NHL "European league" players who say they will come to North America next year and suit up because the NHLers have gone over there and basically taken their jobs in order to stay in shape.

And I agree with scaling back the league. Teams like Edmonton, Vancouver and Calgary need to be protected. Winnipeg and Quebec are already gone. Then there are the teams like Pittsburgh and Buffalo - early 70s expansion teams that I believe can compete if the playing field is financially level.

It is the teams like Nashville, Atlanta, Tampa, Florida, Carolina, Phoenix that need to be trimmed.

If there was no salary cap in the NFL, would there still be a team in Green Bay?
 
clayjohanson said:
Looks like sanity may be returning to the NHL.

The question is, are the concessions by both sides in time to salvage any sort of season?
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Despite the missing players who have committed to playing out the season overseas, any season would probably be worth it... the damage is great already, and it's not like it's a very profitable league to begin with.

Anyhow, the season as it is is far too long. Who can really ramp up the caring from the beginning of a (normal) season until many many months later when you get close to clinching playoffs.
 
well it looks like something may happen now. The league has offered a 45 mil salary cap and the nhl and nhlpa are only 6 mil away from a deal. 6 million is very little so both sides will probably bring it/down and they will agree to something inbetween. I still hope theres no season though
 
Well, we shall find out in about 45 minutes, here. I just got an e-mail from the CBA news site saying that Bettman will have a press conference at 1 PM eastern. I hope it is to say that the season is canceled, but talks are continuing.

Daniel
 
And its...

OVER
 

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I think that the commissioners decision to cancel the season was for the best. Now they should work toward an agreement so that they will be ready for next season. It would be a shameful mistake if they wait again till next Fall. They need to meet each other half way.

http://www.nhl.com/
 
The Macrumors language filters will not let me express my feelings towards Gary Bettman.

I especially love the logic of "a $49 Million salary cap is too high, because if every team started paying their players $49M it would cost more than the league spends right now".

I also love letting a small group of owners in markets that are not viable for hockey anyway dictate what happens in the markets that are viable.

I think the Vancouver Province summed it up best on Monday ... "The silver lining is that for as long as Gary Bettman keeps his job, nobody in the world can be reasonably fired for incompetance".
 
wnba has higher ratings than NHL did. sad sad sad. owners know that the only way to make the game compelling is via salary cap that all teams will be winning to spend. There would be parity which draws fans.
Next hockey needs to penalize more for rough checking and speed up the game. This is what the NBA did this year and now scoring is up like 3 or 4 ppg on average. Let the game be played how it is meant to be played.
 
maxterpiece said:
wnba has higher ratings than NHL did. sad sad sad.
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You are correct from a US point of view (in Canada, the 2004 Stanley Cup was one of the most watched series over, and it was frankly embarassing that the Vancouver celebration at the end of game 7 was larger than the Tampa Bay one).

Who has presided over the NHL while watching viewership and TV revenues slide for 10 years?

Gary Bettman.

owners know that the only way to make the game compelling is via salary cap that all teams will be winning to spend.
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Correction. The only way to make the game compelling to the few people that care in markets that are unviable for this sport is a low salary cap. Vancouver and Calgary both were profitable last year. Both have done this while building viable Cup contenders, and playing an exciting game. I bet both cities together don't add up to the population of Phoenix.

Who expanded this league into a bunch of cities that don't care about the sport, then tried to blame the players for his mistake?

Gary Bettman.

There would be parity which draws fans.
Next hockey needs to penalize more for rough checking and speed up the game. This is what the NBA did this year and now scoring is up like 3 or 4 ppg on average. Let the game be played how it is meant to be played.
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I agree entirely, this is destorying the game. Making it entirely unwatchable. The rule changes that allowed hooking and grabbing that slow down the game, extra referee that breaks the flow of the game, the direction to referees to treat teams differently to "balance" a game.

Who has presided over all these changes in an attempt to bring the game down to a lowest common denominator?

Gary Bettman.

Hmm, I'm beginning to see a pattern here.
 
stcanard said:
I agree entirely, this is destorying the game. Making it entirely unwatchable. The rule changes that allowed hooking and grabbing that slow down the game, extra referee that breaks the flow of the game, the direction to referees to treat teams differently to "balance" a game.
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In the first month or so of the "season", the local LA Kings cable broadcaster had to fill their schedule holes, so they played "classic" games from the past: Game 7 of the 1993 conference finals vs. Toronto, Gretzky passing Howe's points record in Edmonton, etc. (Didn't see any Miracle on Manchester though.) These were exciting games! Back and forth most of the time, odd-man rushes, smooth passing. I'd forgotten how fluid and graceful the game could be because it's been so long since a player could skate without a glove pulling on his jersey. :(

A sign that this was never going to be resolved this year: both local teams' (Kings and Ducks) arenas had scheduled non-NHL events for the nights of late-season games more than a month ago.
 
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