Other than basketball I am really not a huge sports guy. Can someone explain to me why there was no season and why there might not be a next? Thanks.

The owners don't want to pay the players above X amount of dollars. The players want more than X amount of dollars. The players then strike, hoping that the loss of ticket sales will pressure the owners into caving and giving the players what they want, or at least swinging more in their direction. The owners hold fast and refuse to buckle. There are some more talks, which come close to reaching an agreement but ultimately fail and the season is cancelled.

As for why there might be a next it is an issue of a further strike as well as a severely damaged NHL reputation driving down demand for tickets. Personally I think the NHL is done.

The NHL just needs a Lebron James or a Tiger Woods. Ever since Gretzky left, they've got no one.

Am I the only one that thinks athletes get paid too much as it is?

You've obviously never played a professional sport :rolleyes:

Yea.

Nope. I agree completely.

"Ooo, watch me hit/throw/chase a little ball/puck/ratshit, and pay me millions of dollars to do it! No, really, what I do is actually worth that much! I swear!"

So both sides think they're worth far more than they really are. Good ridence.

While I agree that the players are probably being paid more than they deserve, and I'm staunchly anti-union normally, I side with the players on this issue. The owners got themselves into this mess -- they're the ones who chose to pay their employees millions of dollars per year. The players aren't at fault; why would they agree to have their salaries artificially limited?

The long and forever lost concept of:

"For the love of the game"

I agree with the doc. It's the worst in baseball. Owners are always bitching about salaries being too high and then the LA Dodgers buy Kevin Brown for 100 million or the Texas Rangers buy Alex Rodriguez for 250 million. Then everyone else is bitching, saying "Look how much A-Rod is making?! I'm almost as good as him!"

The owners just raise salaries every time they sign someone to some ludicrous deal.

But in hockey, it's different I think. Even in the NHL they don't make very much. Compared to baseball or basketball they make almost nothing. But even compared to football it's not very much.

scottws... it's also a far less popular sport in the states.

A shame, too, since hockey is one of the few sports I actually enjoying watching. What I really like is soccer... but I'm in the wrong country for that one.

The average salary in the NHL is just under 1.5 million US. I'm almost positive that it's higher than the average salary in the NFL (that's pure salary - not including signing bonuses and stuff), but lower than that of MLB and the NBA. The top salaries across the league wouldn't be anything close to the top salaries of the NFL though. I also could totally be wrong about everything I just said.

Players were locked out due to the Player's Association's refusal to sign any agreements with a salary cap. WEll, it's a lot more complicated than that, but it's the gist of it.

I can't see that happening at all. The herd will be thined though. The problem is the NHL expanded too rapidly in the last decade or so. There's a lot of teams in thin markets with little money and little talent. These owners obviously want a salary cap in order to be able to compete with the teams in large markets who can afford to just pour money into their rosters. All those teams are about to die. Chances are that when the NHL resumes it'll be made up of all the Canadian teams, the traditonal American teams, and the large market (read: succesfull) american teams. I'm guessing there will probably be 21 or fewer teams at the end of it (from 30).

That's not really a bad thing for the game but it's bad for players and owners both.

I don't really agree with that completely. Gretsky obviously did a lot for the game, but his retirement in 1999 dint' hurt the league as a whole at all. Revenue continued to increase and everything. There's definitly markets out there that need another star above all else in the league to sell tickets (expansion teams) and keep a high profile, but popularity across the leauge in general didn't decline at all.

Players getting paid too much:

Like anyone else in the workforce obviously they're going to exploit their abilities and position to try to get as much out of it as possible. City workers get paid too much, certain politicains get paid too much, unionized store employees get paid too much, rock stars and actors get paid too much and so on and so forth - but I can hardly blame any of these people for taking what someone is willing to give them and then trying to get more.

The fact is that pro sports is a buisness. It is about playing for the love of the game, but years ago people realised that people love watching these games and someone can make a hell of a lot of money off of it. So the owners go in and start charging more for tickets, and start paying the best players a hell of a lot more money to play for their teams. It's an investment in order to increase ticket sales and therefore make the owners more money. The trend continues and here we are with athletes getting paid millions of dollars all because owners want to outbid each other in order to make more money.

Obviously some teams have more money coming in and can buy up pretty much all the talent, leaving upstart owners trying to get a foothold crying foul. And that's where it gets fucked up. ALL of the owners want salary caps because some of the owners throw money around like there's no tomorrow.

I can't completely side with anyone on this. The footing isn't level, the players can collude but the owners can't because of anti-trust laws, and the players and owners (of certain teams) make too much money in my opinion. But at the same time I'm not nieve enough to believe that even with a strict hard salary cap that there will be any benefit to me. Ticket prices will still go up and merch. will still cost a ton. All it means is that my money is going to one concerned party instead of the other.

Fuck them all, I just want hockey back.

GPW always makes the nicest, well-spoken, competent posts. Even if everything you said was bullshit, I would never know it.

I was genetically created to be the best middle manager on the face of the earth.

Yuck! North American sports. :P

I watch cricket, rugby, tennis, soccer and field hockey.

Correct me if I'm wrong but didnt Europeans invent Hockey?

Ok, you're a girl.



But ICe Hockey is believed to have started in Nova Scotia or something, but I don't think anyone really knows for sure.