With the holiday season almost upon us now, as we arrive at Thanksgiving weekend each of us should have a lot to be thankful for in our personal lives.  Whether it’s family, friends, jobs, it can be whatever makes you happy.  Unfortunately there isn’t a lot to be thankful for as an NHL fan right now.  While I respect Derek’s ability to look at the big picture and appreciate the sport (whether it’s AHL, KHL, college or whatnot) for what it is, I’m a Devils fan.  I like hockey but I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch a game since commissioner Gary Bettman completed his natural hat trick of lockouts with three in a row.  My favorite hockey team is not playing, and as much as I’d like to get into Albany or take a look at the KHL, it’s too much a reminder of what’s no longer here – and doesn’t look to be coming back anytime soon after yet another failed negotiating session this afternoon.

I can see why Derek still wants to watch hockey in other forms.  It’s the best sport out there.  And when they’re playing, the NHL’s the best professional game around.  Unfortunately off the ice, it’s also the worst-run sport around with hypocrites, liars and cheats running it with greed run rampant.  One of the reasons I don’t get into politics more than a few days every four years is because of what it has become on a normal basis.  Too often, it’s two sides both demonizing and blaming each other for everything under the sun and there’s not enough of both sides working together for the common good.  That is exactly what the NHL has become. 

Like clockwork, after every CBA you have two sides being obstructionist, refusing to negotiate in good faith and playing amateurish PR games.  Maybe it’s because of Twitter providing more up-to-the minute news now or the fact I’m more emotionally invested in this lockout being a season ticket holder this time, but it seems to have only gotten worse, and not better this time around.  I would never have thought that possible after losing an entire season in 2004-05 but it seems like both sides are determined to play Global Thermonuclear War again, in a never-ending loop like Joshua the computer in the movie WarGames.  Even baseball wasn’t dumb enough to strike again after ’95, though it came close in 2002.

Of course fans don’t care who ‘wins’ and ‘loses’ the CBA when it’s all said and done, or what the score is.  No fan wants to hear owners crying about how they need a massive overhaul, just seven years after they got a massive overhaul and after an offseason where Minnesota of all teams spent $200 million on two players, and teams threw around long-term contracts like they were going out of style.  Especially when many of these same owners are the ones doing the loudest crying (giving my evil eye to Jeremy Jacobs and Craig Leipold, among others).  It’s incredibly disingenous of owners to be asking for deferred money on contracts signed weeks and even days before the lockout.  Not to mention demanding contract term limits in addition to an increased percentage of HRR.

And no fan wants to hear players martyr themselves about how they’re being bullied with their average current salary of over $2 million a year.  Especially when you have bufoons like Jeff O’Neill and a host of others making themselves look like petulant kids everyday on Twitter and other media outlets.  Having an HRR of 50-50 is more than fair considering owners take the financial risks and the fact that other major sports leagues with higher revenue streams all have similar splits of money now.  The days of NHL players having a 71-29 HRR advantage as they did in the days before the ’04 lockout are over for everyone except Don Fehr, who not only doesn’t want to give up the players’ current 57-43 but is looking to increase it with constant proposals that de-link the salary cap and HRR. 

Yes, owners should be made to pay out the full value of players’ contracts – apart from pro-rating games missed this year – but asking them to assume all the financial burden of a lockout is disingenous at best.  If I were Bettman, I would ask Fehr when the MLBPA plans to make restitution to baseball owners for their myriad of strikes?  After all, if lockouts are solely the fault of owners (despite the PA’s refusal to negotiate or even offer any real proposal until today), then strikes are solely the fault of the players under that standard.  Both sides have blood on their hands and are more interested in playing PR games than actually getting down to business.  Even the two most substantial ‘movements’ of this whole process were steeped in PR.  The NHL’s movement towards 50-50 while trying to extract improvements in every other area last month was just as disingenous as the players attempting even now to ensure raises for themselves every year of a five-year CBA.

Even that last bit is disconcerting for this hockey fan.  Why should hockey fans, sponsors, and TV networks have to deal with this again in five years?  The NBA and the NFL had no problem signing a ten-year agreement after their own protracted labor disputes last year.  At least show embattled fans a sign of good faith by ensuring they don’t have to deal with this again for a very long time, since the playbook is clearly that they will have to deal with it at the expiration of every CBA – at least as long as Bettman and the Fehrs are in charge.  I’m in my mid-thirties now, not very old but I’ve been around long enough to live through three of these already.  Sponsors don’t want to invest in a brand that periodically dissolves every few years and TV networks in Canada and the US are going to be more gun-shy about committing long-term to a league that may take a year off on a whim.  Especially when some have been burned by guaranteed payments to a league without any games to televise currently.

It’s impossible to assess what damage this lockout will ultimately do to the NHL but make no mistake, there has already been damage done.  Fans who were more accepting of the process in 2004 because of a system that had team after team declaring bankruptcy are feeling betrayed that even after missing a year and with small markets healthier (even more so once the revenue sharing that has been agreed on goes into effect), it’s still not good enough for a cabal of owners and a commissioner who doesn’t care about the fans and would rather break the union than play hockey.  And fans are less likely to have sympathy for the players who ‘lost’ the CBA in 2004 and yet eight years later history shows they still got the better of things long-term, even with a 24% rollback and cap in place.  Especially when the players are being led by the same guy whose strike ultimately led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series in baseball.  Having the only guy who got a baseball season canceled going up against the commissioner that got a hockey season canceled isn’t exactly promising for business anytime soon.

Speaking for myself I admit I’m one of the die-hards that’ll be back, although I have to admit it would be much, much, much harder to be sure of that if the Devil players were among the fools speaking out on Twitter, or Jeff Vanderbeek was one of the hypocritical hard-line owners that are holding the league hostage with their greed.  Not to mention having season tickets right behind the net, on the aisle for $22 a game helps keep me in the fold.  If I wasn’t getting such a good deal in a good location, I wouldn’t have season tickets.  And if I didn’t have season tickets then I would be a lot less likely to go to games this year…or next.  Whatever games I did go to would probably be off the secondary market, so other fans could be helped out.  I don’t want to punish the Devils by not going – especially since like I said they’ve managed to avoid getting in the mud publicly so far – but let’s face it, not buying tickets or other merchandise is really the only vehicle fans have to punish the league as a whole, and send a message that being taken for granted will no longer be tolerated.  We can’t boo Bettman…unless there’s a Cup presentation in Newark this July…or Fehr for that matter.

It’s easy enough for me to vow not to buy any more merchandise, at least not for the duration of time which this lockout lasts, since I already have a ton of Devil shirts up the wazoo and my modest collection of five jerseys is one too many right now as it is (since my Zach Parise is staying in the closet for a long, long, long time).  Without an outright boycott, this is really the only way to punish the league as a whole that I can think of.  I did like an idea I read on HF a while back, if somehow you could get the fans to just not show up for the first two or three games of the season, that would send a message loud and clear while not requiring the fans to totally cut off their nose to spite their face – but even in these days of increased social media a widespread and organized boycott would be very hard to pull off.

I do know this, it’s easier to be detached than it is to care.  Despite being a big Devils fan in 2004, I was more detached from the lockout because quite frankly I wasn’t going to as many games back then.  Ironically it was only after the lockout that I started becoming a season ticket holder, although it was mostly because a friend talked me into going in on tickets with her.  Plus, there wasn’t as much news back then, especially since the sides weren’t talking.  It was easier to move on to other things.  Not to mention there’s absolutely no good reason for this lockout.  I posted on one board that this had to be the dumbest lockout in the history of pro sports, and another guy made a good point – the refs/NFL argument was dumber.  Okay, so this is the dumbest lockout where games aren’t being played in pro sports then.

Now I’m a big sports fan that’s struggling to find something to watch, especially since my Jets are likely one more day away from being irrelevant again and my Mets have been irrelevant for at least three years.  It’ll be a while before I ever entertain getting into the NBA again, especially without a New Jersey team anymore though it’s not like Brooklyn’s far away.  Individual sports are hard for me to get into although maybe I’ll watch a little more tennis when the new season starts in January.  Soccer’s another sport I could branch out to, although it’s hard to sit and watch the ordinary run-of-the mill game as opposed to say a US World Cup game or qualifier, or really any World Cup game.  Not only that but one of my best friends – who I’ve gotten more into hockey over the last few years – has also talked about not going now because of anger over the whole situation.  Losing the ability to go to games with her would make it less fun for me ultimately. 

While both sides are sitting around eating turkey tomorrow, they should think about things like this.  Whether it’s losing people to other sports – look at this area where both NBA teams are suddenly good – or to general apathy/betrayal.  Collateral damage can even affect people like me who want to get back into hockey every bit as much as I did before.  While I get annoyed at labor disputes (especially senseless ones like this) I don’t take them personally, but I suspect I’m in the minority on that.  Especially among people who’ve experienced three lockouts in two decades.  I’ve now seen as many lockouts in my lifetime as Devil Stanley Cups.  Even I want to find a way to punish the league, especially after what happened in baseball in 1995.  Fans DID make their voice heard loud and clear…attendance dropped 20%, venom was palpable and poof, there’ve been no labor problems since then.  Even with that, baseball needed to dance with the steroid devil to get the fans all the way back with inflated HR totals.

What the NHL has to be careful about is there’s no Crosby-Ovechkin draft lurking on the horizon this time around – indeed they’re already losing a lot of the casual fans that got into hockey because of those two great players, who came into the league right after the last lockout ended.  They can’t invent another shootout or other rule changes to entice fans, it’s all already in the NHL.  Fans who were forgiving in 1995 and 2005 are going to feel all the more betrayed now, especially in the US where the economy’s been struggling over the last few years.  There’s only so far you can push people.  Maybe the NHL won’t pay for this lockout in Canada either, god knows if you ever saw empty seats there that’d spell real trouble for most of the league’s 23 US teams…but you do wonder what the effects will be in most US cities.  Especially a place like Boston, where the aformentioned Jacobs has been one of the most notorious figures in this lockout.  If you have problems in Original Six markets, that’d spell real problems for the Western and Southern teams that Bettman’s tried to prop up since his tenure began.

Before the NHL and NHLPA decide their next move they need to take a real hard look in the mirror, at the state of the game and decide whether winning the battle is worth losing even more respect as a ‘major’ sport.  They also need to think long and hard about the people who are out of work, and forced to find new jobs because of layoffs and instability caused in team and league offices all around the NHL.  Those people, in this economy do not care whether the players are getting a fixed or linked percentage of a $3 billion pie, or whether the owners can throw around 10-year contracts anymore.  With d-day approaching in the next few weeks, it’s time for both sides to either negotiate for real or accept binding arbitration and be done with this mess either way.

I may be back, but an increasing number of people won’t by the day.  It’s time for all parties involved to put ego aside and stop chasing phyrric victories.