One of the most sordid crusades of greed in the history of sports drags to its pathetic end. As alpepper points out, the players got beaten like a bad dog by the owners, losing on almost every issue. The big loser is the sport itself, which has steadily been weakened by poor decision making at the league and management level over the last decade. This year long hiatus has alienated a lot of fans, leaving only the hard core loyalists except in the relative handful of hockey mad cities. While my sympathies in this are largely with the players, they bear their share of responsibility for the debacle. While it seems clear that the league's intent was to break, or at least weaken, the players' association, the players handling of the issue left a lot to be desired. In large part it can be summed up as follows (to paraphrase Bill James): The all wanted the money. And they all wanted it all.

What a mess. This players took a beating by the owners. It was one of the worst beatings in Hockey since Dale Rolfe had his skull turned inside out by Dave Schultz. They lost a whole season of salary, got hit with a very restrictive salary cap, and had all the rules changed for them. So far, it's not looking good for hockey. With the exception of the usual hockey-crazed burgs (like Philly, Detroit, and the bandwagoneers in Tampa Bay), crowds at NHL arenas are well below capacity and I have seen not a second of televised hockey. I heard Outdoor Life Network's airing of an NHL game drew a Nielsen rating of 0.0 [A Bluto Blutarsky score].

A very major issue in the sports world; professional hockey was nearly brought to an end by a labor dispute. The other day a collective bargaining agreement was signed between the owners and the players union. The strike really had its origins back in 1995, when after the last strike, both parties signed an interim agreement which did nothing more than postpone the fight that was brewing. The collective bargaining agreement signed 10 years ago expired last year. When they began hammering out a new agreement, the league wanted to establish what can really be called a salary cap. The players union vowed not to accept this, even though the NHL used to spend more than 75% of its revenues on salaries, much higher than any American or Canadian sport. I personally think that there is nothing wrong with a salary cap, that is, if both parties consent to it. What made the NHL strike so contentious was the union wouldn't agree to it. The NHL, in a move to control costs, was stuck on installing this. In this case, there were more complications. After much haggling, the option of linking salaries to revenues was brought to the table. Many players didn't like it, but some saw the long term value of having this structure set up. However at the end of the day, the players had to settle on a weaker position, for they had to take both salary caps and the new revenue-sharing structure. The new structure means that the richer teams are going to have to distribute talent down to the teams that operate in small markets. They've also made new rules speeding up the game by weakening defensive measures, now there will be more opportunities for scoring chances. The changes are radical, but they're needed to bring back the fans after a 2 year hiatus.

I don't know if this is a big story. It's big for ardent hockey fans, enormously huge for the league and players. But it remains to be seen how the sports world in general will react to the end of the lockout. Hopefully, other professional leagues will learn from their stupd power struggle and callous selfishness, and avoid anything similar. But, the sad fact is, stupid people are sometimes remarkably persevering.