Major League Baseball is back, babie! The fucking tools managed to avoid destroying things completely!
(Assuming the players union ratifies the deal)
Also, a committee to review speeding up the game, including a pitch clock?
Also, did I read this right? Universal Designated Hitter? SUCK IT, NATIONAL LEAGUE SNOBS!!
Technically the NHL is still locked out. The legal documents are still being drawn up. The owners expect to ratify the deal tomorrow at the Board of Governors meeting. The players will have an electronic vote over the interwebs to see if they approve of the new deal. The talk now is of training camps opening on Sunday, and the season starting on January 19th. It should be noted that the 19th is one day after Gary Bettman’s deadline to cancel the season. Oh well.
So the lockout has not officially ended, but it effectively has ended. But when we look back at this years from now, what will be the moment we look at as the moment the lock out ended?
It will be the moment when the Toronto Maple Leafs fired General Manager Brian Burke.
This is the dick move of all dick moves. They waited through the off season after the Leafs failed to make the post season for something like the seventh straight season. They waited through four months of lockout. Then, suddenly, just a few days before training camp opened on the insultingly shortened season they gave him the axe.
There are rumors going around that he got canned over Roberto Luongo. There was talk of a trade in the works and the speculation is that Burke did not want to pull the trigger, but Leafs ownership did. I’m of two minds on Luongo. First, as a Bruins fan, I love to see him lose. He choked like a chump in the cup finals against the Bruins and it was glorious to see. How dare you tell Tim Thomas how to play the puck! Tim Thomas might be a right wing nut job, but he already had a Vezina in his closet and was a shoe in for a second. Forget the fact that after your little bit of friendly advice he went on to win a Stanley Cup (at your expense) and a Conn Smythe (again, at your expense). What a jack ass!
Of course I am also a lifelong fan of the Lowell Lock Monsters and Luongo was, for a brief time, one of us. I tend to go easy on him for old times sake.
But given the way he has tended to lose his sanity during the playoffs, and how he still remains saddled with the can’t-win-the-big-game label (unfairly thanks partly to the first three rounds of his Cup run, but mostly due to that shiny gold medal he won in the Olympics), there is no way any serious GM would have pulled the trigger on any trade, unless The Iron Lung (that’s what we called him in Lowell… well, that’s what my brother, sister, sister’s ex, and I called him) were some sort of inexpensive throw in. Nope. Not going to take that deal, friends. Luongo has to win a Stanley Cup before I would consider dealing for him. Let the Canucks deal with him.
Regardless of the why or the how the Leafs fired Brian Burke, the fact is that suddenly those few of us who still follow the NHL are talking about something besides the lockout. Today is the day that we actually start moving on.
I will be damned if I give this asshole of a league a dime this year, but I suddenly am not bitching about the labor dispute and the work stoppage. I suddenly am wondering if Chris Bourque can make his dad’s old team. I’m suddenly wondering if Tyler Seguin can score 50 goals in 48 games.
Go Bruins!
I have such mixed feelings about the end of the NHL lockout. I love hockey so much. I bleed black and gold. I am a Boston Bruins fanatic. I hang on every shift, every play, every pass, every check, every shot, every save, every goal. Damn it, I love this friggin game!
But they hurt me again. The hurt me eight years ago when they cancelled a whole season, yet this time hurts me even more. I guess it’s knowing that I am partly to blame this time. I came back last time and this year I paid for my lack of vision.
I believe in my heart that three lockouts under the current commissioner proves that the league is fundamentally broken and must be allowed to fail. Then a new league, one that cares about its customers and does not take them for granted or use them as bargaining chips, can rise from the ashes of the old.
But damn it if I don’t love my Bruins and damn me for wanting to see them play this year.
This morning at around 6:00am Eastern time, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and NHLPA Director Donald Fehr appeared together at a press conference and announced to the few of us left who still care, that a framework for a new collective bargaining agreement has been reached.
There area a few things left to do. The legal document has to be written up. It then has to be presented to the league and union memberships. Then it needs to be ratified by both sides. This crap has gone on long enough that we can assume both sides will rubber stamp it, just so they can get back to work.
After that, a schedule will be announced. Players and coaches will gather together, and an abbreviated training camp will take place for about a week. Dougie Hamilton will show up to Bruins camp, and nut job Tim Thomas will not. After about a week the butchered, insultingly shortened season will commence and history will fill up a great big bucket with asterisks to place next to everything that happens.
The single most important thing left to do needs to happen before the games start. The fans need to keep their money.
I said it before, I’ll say it again. This disaster is the fans’ fault. If we had punished the league for its lack of loyalty last time, then this lockout would never have happened. We did not punish them though. We came back to the game with our wallets open, ready to blow our dough on tickets, merch, concessions, anything. I’m as guilty as the next sheep.
We, the fans, cannot… Must not… Make the same mistake again. Keep your money, hockey fans. Teach the NHL that our loyalty, and our money are not to be taken for granted. Show the league and the players union who the real bosses are. Teach them a lesson that they will never forget, and stop this bullshit from happening again.
Do not buy tickets. Do not buy merchandise. I’d like to say that we should boycott TV broadcasts, but I don’t think many of us will be able to go that far. I will say that we should continue to avoid doing business with companies that sponsor the league and the individual teams. That one is particularly important for me, being a Bruins fan, as word has it that Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs is due for a much larger share of blame pie than most owners.
I can’t expect fans to not watch the games. I can encourage all fans to not spend their money. Let all 30 teams play in empty buildings for their ridiculous shortened season. Let them know who was affected by this idiocy the most. Let them know who they really work for.
tick tock, tick tock.
The clock is ticking. One week to go until the league’s deadline to cancel the season. One week to go until the unthinkable happens… again… and the league cancels the whole entire season. One week.
And the two sides didn’t meet face to face yesterday. Are you kidding?
So here are two of the remaining sticking points.
Ready?
The league wants next season’s salary cap to be 60 million dollars. The players want next season’s salary cap to be 65 million dollars.
Both sides have agreed that term length of the new collective bargaining agreement (assuming they ever actually agree to one) should be ten years. The players want an option to back out after seven years. The league wants an option to back out after eight years.
There’s also an issue dealing with player pensions that seems like it might be a legitimate problem, but is still something that a little give and take should be able to resolve in a short time. Still though… they are hung up on seven years vs eight years, and 60 million vs 65 million. Really. Both sides are saying that publicly. Honestly, they are. Both sides are so incredibly stupid that they are risking the cancellation of ANOTHER NHL season over these issues.
My god people, how much of a collective group of assholes can you be? For the salary cap? How about 62.5 million. Problem solved! As for the term length, I have a more complicated solution. Take a coin, right? Flip it. Heads means the opt out is seven years. Tails means the opt out is eight years. Problem solved!
They have had a Federal mediator at all of the recent talks. I swear that poor son of a bitch must be ready to just start punching these idiots. Meet with the players and punch Donald Fehr in his World Series canceling head. Meet with the players and punch Gary Bettman in his season canceling head. BOOM! Problems solved! Drop the damn puck!
I am such a bloody hypocrite. Months ago I said that if the NHL lock out cancels a single game then I am done with hockey.
The lock out started and I called for the league to be replaced with a new league that won’t piss on its fans’ loyalty. Then the league offered its 50/50 split of hockey related revenue and hope flashed for a second before I realized we were talking about Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr and they’d find a way to screw it up. Of course they did.
Later the NHLPA came up with an offer that reportedly moved significantly toward the league’s demands and again hope reared its ugly head. Only for a second though as I knew the NHL would screw it all,up. Of course they did.
Next it was the Federal Mediators that caused the hypocritical instant of hope, but that wasn’t much. The two sides are too stubborn to work together, why would they work with someone else.
When the Bettman/Fehr free meetings were announced I thought it was a joke. It was all for show. Like either one of those ego maniacal assholes would let a deal be done without them. Then earlier tonight I let some optimistic Twitter goofiness suck me back in again. The two sides are meeting in a hotel and members of the press are sitting in a meeting room twiddling their thumbs.
Until… Some one came in and set up a podium with the NHL logo on it. That must mean an announcement is imminent, right? Maybe this is it!
There is that optimism again. I want hockey, even if it means being a hypocrite. I loath what these greedy bastards have done to us. After the last lockout they should have killed themselves rather than go through this garbage again, but they didn’t. To hell with the fans who pay the league’s bills. Why should they care about us, right? And still, even with this frigging evil I want my damn game back. I’ll line up with the suckers who came back AGAIN and be all forgiving. What a Putz.
Fortunately it was a false alarm. Hours later there are reports that the two sides, while still bargaining in the wee hours of the morning, are still far apart.
Welcome back, my integrity.
Death to the NHL.
Well it all ends at 11:59pm tomorrow night. That’s when the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement expires and the third lockout in Gary Bettman’s reign as commissioner begins. Let’s be real though, Bettman announced that the lockout would happen a month ago. Everything that’s happened from then until now is just public relations crap. The lockout began when that announcement was made. Their first proposal to the players union was so insulting as to guarantee no middle ground would be reached by the deadline. The lockout was already underway.
Three lockouts. He’s already erased about half of one season, and 100% of another. Now we’re going to go through it again. Can you imagine trying to work with some one like that? It’s almost as if his only means of negotiating is cancelling games. It’s insulting.
And where are the fans in all of this? Ignored. Forgotten. Insulted. The millionaires and the billionaires once again fight over our money like the spoiled brats that they are, and once again we are the ones suffering for it. Do you think Jeremy Jacobs gives a rat’s ass that his Bruins miss a few games when he is bringing in revenue from every other event that happens at the TD Garden? I’m going to see Rush there next month, and that asshole gets a piece of my admission. Do you think the players give a rat’s ass about missing a few games when they can all barrel off to Europe and steal jobs from other, less talented hockey players?
For the third time we have to sit here and watch as a deadline approaches while both sides make pointless proposals that they each know the other side will instantly reject and then blame the other side for not being good negotiators. It’s as if they are following a script. Part of that script is when the lockout eventually ends, the fans will come rushing back into the arenas buying tickets and $100 jerseys and all the hot dogs Jacobs can sell so that everyone can start rebuilding their war chests so that they can be ready for the next lockout when it comes.
Not this time. We fans need to stand up to this. We need to stay away in droves. We cannot come rushing back again. When the lockout ends the entire league needs to play the entire season in empty buildings. We can’t give them our money anymore. We can’t watch them on television so that they can live off of that revenue stream. We need their sponsorships to dry up and die. We need their broadcast contracts to never, ever be renewed.
We need to let the NHL die. Personally, I hope the next lock out never ends. I hope they just wither and die.
To hell with them.
As another day draws to a close without any real progress on the NHL collective bargaining front (both sides offered proposals today, but it’s all just PR at this point) I can’t help but reiterate what I’ve been saying for the last couple of weeks.
This is all our (the fans’) fault. All of it.
After the 2004-05 season was cancelled due to collective bargaining bullshit, we fans should have stayed away from the game in droves. We should have punished both sides for not taking our wishes into account. We should have made them suffer. They cancelled the ’04-05 season. We should have cancelled the ’05-06 season.
But we did not. We came back in droves. We missed our game… OUR game… so much that we came running back to the rinks and welcomed the league back as if nothing happened. We welcomed them back with open arms, as if they hadn’t just collectively pissed all over us for an entire year. We opened our wallets to them as if they hadn’t just taken a giant shit on us.
And this is the thanks we get.
Had we stayed away after the last lockout the league would commit suicide rather than consider another work stoppage. They would be so terrified of losing the fans who did come back that they would never dream of closing the doors and locking us out of our game again.
But that did not happen, and now we are three days away from another lock out.
We cannot let this happen again.
Inside the Red Head's Head 