NHL lockout begins

After that warm June night when the Tampa Bay Lightning hoisted the Stanley Cup, it became the biggest concern for all hockey fans, if it wasn't already. The lockout has begun, and with it, perhaps the end of the NHL as we know it.

The NHL lockout has been all but a certainty for a while, with the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the owners and union expiring September 15. Commissioner Gary Bettman, who has become an almost hated man in some hockey circles, announced that the owners would lock the players out starting at midnight.

This is the second stoppage of play under Bettman, the first coming 10 years ago, when hockey was gaining major popularity in the U.S. and was poised to overtake the Michael Jordan-less NBA as the number one winter sport.

The lockout ended that speculation. Over the last 10 years, player salaries have spun out of control. This strain combined with over-expansion to unconventional Sun Belt hockey markets (such as Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, Miami, Anaheim, Dallas, San Jose; all in the last 11 years) has meant that 20 of the 30 teams in the NHL are losing money.

Something has to be done so the owners can stop hemorrhaging money the way they are now. Players make 76 percent of revenues, which is astonishingly high. Far higher than any of the three other major team sports.

But the two sides don't seem to be willing at all to compromise. The Colorado Avalanche's NHL Players Association representative, Ian LaPerriere said to reporters last spring that hockey could not only be gone this year, but all of the 2005-06 season, meaning the next time Americans see hockey could be at the 2006 Olympics in Turin.

While Washington Capitals TV announcer Joe Beninati dismissed that when I talked to him about this last summer, he did say that the two groups are miles apart on a new deal. Beninati, like nearly all other NHL employees, will not get paid during this lockout, and he didn't have any say in the decision. The league said this summer they might have to lay off nearly 50% of its staff in its New York and Toronto offices because of this lockout.

Beninati added that the sides wouldn't have real productive meetings until the lockout, when players would stop getting paid.

Indeed, they really didn't sit down and talk much. There were a few meetings here and there between Bettman and NHLPA leader Bob Goodenow, but they did not produce much. The NHL made proposals to the players that had something called "cost certainty," - jargon for a salary cap. The players union has said they will not stand for one, the main issue the two sides vehemently disagree on. The players would even accept a luxury tax, but they do not want a hard cap that would drive salaries down.

"Until [Bettman] gets off the salary-cap issue, there's not a chance for us to get an agreement," Goodenow said in Toronto, also adding that players "are not prepared to entertain a salary cap in any way, shape, measure or form."

But the players are making an average of $1.8 million a year, a number that has skyrocketed in the last ten years. While we did not see much free spending this off-season as last, that can be attributed to the upcoming lockout as well as the fact that teams are losing money. The Capitals have lost nearly $100 million since Ted Leonsis bought the team from Abe Pollin in 1999.

The biggest worry about the lockout is not even whether or not there will be a season, but if there will really be an NHL the way we know it ever again. The league has 30 teams, including 8 in the South and 4 in the desert Southwest. These teams are losing money, and some very well might have to move, or even contract. The value of some teams has plummeted; the Anaheim Mighty Ducks are going to be sold for a paltry $50 million, chump change in major team sports.

The league is losing, if it already hasn't already, its spot as a major sport in the United States. A good example of how it has sadly lost popularity is just the talk leading up to the work stoppage. In 2002, when baseball was barreling towards a strike that never came, there was outrage from politicians, television, everybody. With this hockey lockout, there was none of that. People just don't seem to care.

Plus, unlike the recent NBA and baseball situations, most of these NHL players can play elsewhere, maybe never to return. Joe Thornton, the star of the Boston Bruins, has already signed a deal with a Scandinavian team. Peter Forsberg, maybe the best player in the league, will likely leave to play with MoDo, a team in Sweden. Teppo Numminen of the Nashville Predators will wait out the first few months of the lockout in Middle Tennessee, where he lives, but if a season is scuttled, he will head back to Finland. These are not the only players who will leave, many to never return.

Both sides say they are determined to help out the sport in the long run. However their talk shows that even a longer Armageddon than the 1994 baseball strike that lasted 7 months, to be likely. The CBA has issues that are costing teams a huge amount of money. There were $275 million in losses last year, according to a tax audit.

But the sides don't seem to be committed. They have met every so often, but there has been no rush to get anything done. Bettman and Goodenow say they care about doing the best for their sides, to get the best deal they can get. Bettman reportedly said in an NHL broadcasters meeting in New York last year that they would not agree on anything less than the best deal they can possibly get.

However, this staunch approach is not the best way to do it in the long run. Or the short run. Or at all. This league is in danger of going under if the two sides don't agree on a deal, and soon, before this whole season is cancelled.

Goodenow and Bettman have said that they are only looking out for best interests. But that's apparently not in the game that they run. If this lockout goes on for too long, not only will the players be gone, but also so will the fans. The last lockout ruined all the inroads it had made in the U.S. in the last ten years. This one could ruin the NHL forever.