We've considered events in the Middle East and the Far East. Now it's time to turn our attention to something of greater import to folks in the Great White North and the satellite to the south.
I refer to the failure of the National Hockey League to get its 2012-13 season under way on time. It now appears possible that there may be no season at all. The owners of the 30 NHL clubs have locked out their most valuable employees, the players, with the result that the pre-season games which should start this weekend Saturday will not so do. No national anthems will be sung, no pucks will be dropped, and 1000s of hockey fans on both sides of the world's longest undefended border will have to find something else to watch on TV.
The owners and the players are at an impasse, the cause of which is pure and simple greed. ["Pure"? Ed.] The two sides cannot agree on how to share a 3-billion-dollar pie. Following the lockout which wrote off the 2004-5 season, the owners gave the players a generous helping -- 57% of the revenue, larger than the chunk given to the players of any other professional team sport. Now the owners want to take it back. And they're not even Indians!
No indeed. What the majority of the owners (and a minority of the players) are is Americans, and they are in hockey for the money. It's purely a business proposition, not a part of the national ethos, as the game is in Canada.
To make matters worse, the NHL is allegedly run by an American, a dwarf named Bettman who has never been seen to lace on a pair of skates, let alone play the game. This is the third labour dispute, on his watch, to result in cancellation of all or part of a season. He is also responsible for keeping hockey in Phoenix, the introduction of the shootout and other acts of lunacy which no hockey man could ever countenance. But Bitchman is secure in his position because he's the bitch of the owners, a majority of whom... go back to previous paragraph.
What is to be done? A more cogent question would be, is the NHL broken beyond repair? Perhaps it's time to put the "national" back in "National Hockey League", and return it (and Lord Stanley's silverware) to Canadian control.
The Lord of all the Canucks, "Call me Steve" Harpoon, is reputed to be a hockey fan. Let him introduce legislation to nationalize (geddit?) all seven Canadian teams, and maybe add an eighth in Québec City, for good measure. That would be one dandy league. As for the Americans, they can go play basketball, or maybe soccer.
Note from Ed.: I regret having to cut Walt's rant short, but the men are here to wrap him in a wet sheet. As a filler, here's a very relevant musical selection.
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