The NHL lockout is extremely sad. There is apparently no urgency to get hockey started again. For those that have no idea why there isn't hockey let me explain. The contract for the players to keep playing has expired and has not been re-negotiated. The reason being that the owners (of the teams) do not want to pay ridiculous amounts of money to sign-on players for such sums as 7-8 million dollars for one player. At the same time, the same player complains because he doesn't have any good teammates.
The players, however, cannot take all the blame, even though many people call them greedy. Let's say that I worked in a mill. If the owner of the mill decides to give me a raise, because I have been doing a good job, I am not going to complain. Likewise if a competing mill gives me a better contract and more money I would go and work at the other mill, this is logical.
Two standard hockey pucks
NBA Salary Cap history
Wayne Gretzky, New York Rangers.This is why the players cannot be blamed.
The owners are the ones that can be said to be the root of this entire mess. When one owner, out of 30, pays a ridiculous amount of money to one player, the other owners are force to do the same, because this raises the bar on the salary. Again let me go back to the mill example, if one owner of a competing mill decides to hire all the top mill works, and give them a large raise, the other competing mill owners are forced to pay their workers simply to retain them. This is the exact same situation in the NHL.
Now that both sides are locked out, it looks as if the NHL (the owners) wants to break the players union (NHLPA/the players). The owners are determined to set a hard salary cap (a team cannot exceed a certain amount). Now the players say that they will not play with a hard salary cap. That is why we are currently locked-out
Now I don't feel sorry for the owners or the players, the multi-millionaires. Who I do feel sorry for is all the stadium workers, the ice cleaners, the television workers, and the young hockey players that are waiting to be signed to a NHL team, now they cannot, because there is no hockey. Furthermore, it is only a select handful of players (the richer ones) that do not want the hard salary cap. Most of the players only make about 1-2 million dollars. Yes this is a lot of money, but still pocket change compared to the players that make 10-15 million dollars.
Lastly, I don't have a new solution to this lockout. A fluctuating salary cap would work very well, this is a cap that changes year to year according to the revenues of the teams. This is a very sad even to Canadians. Right now, a study shows that 1 out of 3 "die-hard" hockey fans are losing interest. All I have to say to the NHL and the NHLPA, is "get your acts together all your fans are losing interest".
Sources:
www.nhl.com
www.wikipedia.com
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