They met this morning. Plenty of info coming out about it, all bad.

Fuck the owners. They are saying NHL players are making too much money, but just yesterday Taylor Hall gets 7 years and 42 million dollars. Hilarious. They've consistently been paying players unsustainable salaries for years, realize it now and are going to lock the players out and irrevocably damage the league in the process.

We're not making money, and that's one reason we need to fix our system. We need to fix how much we're spending right now. [The Wild's] revenues are fine. We're down a little bit in attendance, but we're up in sponsorships, we're up in TV revenue. And so the revenue that we're generating is not the issue as much as our expenses. And [the Wild's] biggest expense by far is player salaries.

As soon as Donald Fehr became involved, you knew this would happen. I never understand the owners. They spend money wildly and then complain about spending money. I usually side with the owners in these disputes because the players are making a ton with little or no risk (i.e. many teams lose money or don't make a good return on their investment), but the owners are very tough to defend.

The owners won last time and will win again. There are too many struggling teams for them to give up. Heck, even the Blackhawks don't make money....after their Stanley Cup team, the Tribune article said it would take about 5 years for them to get to break even.

SHARK, sports teams make most of their money from tv contracts, and the NHL's sucks. The NFL is rich because of its Directv deal and the broadcast rights with various channels. It is the same reason the Yankees are so wealthy- they have their own tv network.

Thus, the NHL is a very poor league financially.

Rovell: "Donald Fehr has never faced an opponent like the NHL owners. Their weapon is a niche fan base that'll come back no matter what."

No surprise, but Rovell's quote is incredibly untrue. Hockey is by far the most reliant sport on gate receipts. A lockout will absolutely pummel attendance except for select markets.

BTW, the NHL signed a great (relatively speaking) TV contract with NBC this past year.

Gary Bettman is THE worst commissioner in the history of professional sports. It's that simple. While it's my favorite sport, hockey doesn't register, for whatever reason, with the majority of the sports consumers in the United States. To take what's basically a niche sport and expand it into areas like Atlanta (which has now lost 2 franchises), Columbus, Nashville, Florida, Arizona, et al was a classic case of not seeing the forest thru the trees. The owners got their quick cash infusion from franchise fees but are now crying poor and how so many teams are losing money. The product on the ice would be so much better if the teams I listed were folded.

None of those places are hockey hotbeds, and while some may have decent attendance, they can't or won't compete with the big time teams even with a salary cap given the market they're in. There's too big of a difference between the salary cap ceiling and the floor, which causes smaller market teams to spend just enough to not get in trouble with the league but not enough to attrace top level talent. Then, when an owner like the one in Minnesota spends crazy money for Parise and Suter, months later the owners make it known they want a rollback on player salaries. What?! It's ridiculous. I'm completely on the players' side on this. The NHL owners can blow me.

There's too big of a difference between the salary cap ceiling and the floor

Yeah, asslicker Rovell got it completely wrong. The owners have never reckoned with a negotiator like Fehr. The owners won in large part because Bob Goodenow was such a bumbling idiot.

Rovell is kidding himself if he thinks fanbases in marginal NHL markets will come back as strong as ever after a second lockout in eight years. Like, yeah, there are probably about 7,500 degenerates out of 1.8 million who live and die with the Carolina Hurricanes, but you're really risking your larger revenue streams--luxury suites, advertising partnerships, etc--if you keep shutting down your business every few years.

The problem is that the NHL doesn't have central revenue the way other leagues do. There are about ten out of thirty organizations which operate successfully in their own markets, and from there they're expected to pay for their own expenses and everybody else's. One way (relocation) or another (contraction), the fact that so many teams can't make money has to be addressed.

The blackhawks training camp thing has been cancelled.