As you know by now, the NHL Lockout is over and there is a tentative CBA agreement in place between the NHL and the NHLPA. If the NHL Lockout had gone on for the whole season I had vowed to never watch another game, and never step foot in an NHL Arena again unless it was for a College Game or a concert or something similar. I would have stuck to it too, because this lockout was ridiculous. And to be perfectly honest, I’m still pretty bitter about the lockout going on for this long. The NHL led sponsors/advertisers on for a while, and made it seem like this new CBA they were going to work on would consist of nothing more than a few tweaks, this obviously was not the case.
The deal that has been tentatively done is pretty much a deal they could have made in July or August, had they wanted too. The Owners during the last lockout got every last thing they wanted in the CBA, it was literally their creation and the players were essentially forced to sign it or they would be locked out forever. This time, the Owners tried to do almost the exact same thing, except this time the players were prepared to fight back. There were about 11 teams or so that were driving the lockout, trying to get the best deal possible so that they would stop losing money. But now to make a deal frustrates me because there is nothing intrinsically unique or difficult about this deal. And yet, 32 games, the All-Star Game and the Winter Classic were all cancelled.
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