LOCKOUT: Day 70 – Is all hope lost?

September 13, 2012; New York, NY, USA; NHL commissioner Gary Bettman speaks during a press conference at the Crowne Plaza Times Square. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-US PRESSWIRE

Well, another block of games are lost. While we are at it, let us toss away the All-Star weekend just to make sure we can really turn hockey fans into basketball and football fans. Well done Bettman! Superb job Jacobs! and a whole lot of ‘bloody shame on you!’ for all the owners who could have been making money(or losing less depending on the owner.), but chose to go along with this stupid lockout! You could have kept negotiating with the players while they played. You SHOULD have done that. At least by that line of reasoning, you would have won the PR war.

So now what? A third of the season is gone, and the players are about to take the incredible step of de-certifying the union. You wanted chaos owners? You wanted a rollback? Well, I’ve got some news for you. If the players go through with this, and are able to get it done… your wish will be fulfilled.  A rollback to pre-union days. (I wonder if the owners need to hark back to their childhoods when most of the fairy tale stories had warnings about wishes and how many of them turned into nightmares?) De-certification would allow individual players to take their fight to the courts where they could test anti-trust laws on both sides of the border.(You think Norma Rae was inspiring? Take Norma Rae, add a hundred pounds of muscle, toss in a lot of frustration, bring in an agent with the instincts of a Moroccan pit viper and watch the owners squirm.) If the players then earn individual bargaining rights, the next step would be for a lot of individual suits against the league for unfair (or illegal) business practices and/or ask the judge to end the lockout.

This could likely happen. If the owners thought it was hell on earth before this whole new paradigm would likely cause one(or more) teams to fold in frustration and insolvency. Revenue would continue to tank, and the possibility of a whole new (and likely smaller) NHL becomes a more likely reality.

Once again, well done Commissioner Bettman.