There Will be No NHL Lockout for Me

I read two NHL articles on espn.com today during my lunch break.

The first, written by Katie Strang was titled No new CBA will mean lockout.  In this article NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is quoted as saying that the league will not play another season under the old labor agreement.  It says that after six weeks of negotiations there are still huge differences between what the league and players union want to do financially.  The players union has yet to enter a counter proposal to the initial league proposal which i find completely retarded.  You've had Six Weeks and you still haven't responded?  I almost always side with labor in these negotiations, but in this case the waiting seems completely idiotic.  Anyway, the players have said that if no new agreement is in place when the current agreement expires on September 15th, they are willing to let the new season start while negotiations continue.

Not Bettman.  In a statement that proves without a doubt that the NHL owners and their lap dog of a puppet commissioner have zero interest in maintaining the NHL and are in fact actively trying to remove it from the face of the Earth, Gary Bettman said that if there is no new agreement in place by 9/15, the owners will lock out the players.

Now lets look at the wayback machine.  Eight years ago the NHL owners locked out the players for an entire season.  AN ENTIRE SEASON!  They cancelled a whole year while they squabbled over money.  It was disgusting.  It was vile.  It was evil.  And they didn't give a flying leap.

The fans came back.  Much to everyone's surprise, they came back rather quickly.  They were so happy to have their league back that they refused to punish them for their greed and lack of respect for those who actually pay for their crummy league:  The fans.

I'm just as guilty as the next idiot fan.  I came right back even though my team, the Bruins, handled the whole situation so poorly that they imploded before our very eyes and eventually traded the guy who would win the league MVP award for a bag of pucks and a broken stick blade.  It was horrible, and I came back anyway.  I did not do anything to make the league suffer for the way it insulted me the previous season.  I came back.

I will not make the same mistake twice.

The second article I read was written by Scott Burnside and it was titled, Fans should bolt if CBA halts season.  Never has a sports column resonated so deeply with me.  I agree completely.  If a single game is lost this year due to a lockout or a strike I am done with the NHL.  Not just the NHL, I will be done with hockey.  My wallet and I will carry out our sentence on all organized hockey.  No more NHL, not more AHL, no more NCAA, no Juniors, no anything.  I'm done.

I will not allow myself to be insulted again.

I have been a hockey fanatic for 20 years.  I had season tickets to an NHL team.  For years I had season tickets to an AHL team.  I used to host an NCAA hockey radio show...

And if the NHL has a work stoppage this year I will write it all off and be done.

I will not allow myself to be insulted again.