Lockout may cancel season

If you're a hockey fan, I hope you haven't already set your heart on those evenings at home in front of the fire, watching your favorite sport.

The lockout by owners of NHL players looks like it may cancel the entire season for the first time in 87 years.

If you're looking for the simple difference between owners and players - owners want a system that ties salaries to revenues, and players say that is a salary cap, and they want nothing to do with a cap on salaries. The differences are not just that simple, though.

The owners have offered six different scenarios, but each one has been rejected by the players union as being different versions of a cap. The union has countered with a one-time 5% pay cut, a luxury tax on payrolls over $50 million, and a reduction in rookie salaries, but the owners say that isn't even close to enough.

There is mistrust between the two sides, much like there was in the last collective bargaining agreement in Major League Baseball.

The players got a look at the books of four different teams, and say that they discovered $52 million in team revenues that were not reported.

Owners say that 75% of current revenues go to salaries, and they'd like to whittle that down to somewhere above 50%.

One owner can set a standard by giving a big salary to one player. That contract sets the scale and all other players place themselves somewhere on the chart. Players who go to arbitration using this scale have never lost.

In the 10 years since the last agreement was signed, salaries have increased from an average of $572,000 to $1.83 million.

In the same time, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman says the league has lost $1.8 billion. It seems like they're following the same principles that our leaders in Washington D.C. have been using. That is, $273 million in losses in 2002-03 - no problem. $224 million lost last year - just keep going.

The players say six teams made up 75% of the total loss last year.

But what difference should that make?

At some point you have to stop putting out more than you're bringing in.

Where hockey normally brings it in is through gate receipts at their arenas, because it is not a big revenue TV sport.

The Detroit Chamber of Commerce estimates that each Red Wings game brings around $2.2 million into the Detroit economy. If the dispute becomes a long one, and I'm betting it will, there is a danger that fans will find something else on which to spend their money.

The NHLPA has told players to prepare for up to 18 months without hockey, and the owners appear to be settling in for a lengthy recess as well.

Former President of CBS Sports, Neil Pilson, wonders if hockey is in jeopardy of overestimating its importance in the sports spectrum.

While the players are sticking together for the moment, there is some disagreement about whether the player's union is thinking of ALL players, or mostly of the elite few at the top.

To the players playing a sport, it is the most important sport in the world, but that doesn't make it so.

Hockey needs to take a serious look at itself in the mirror, and see itself as it is. Personally, I could still live on $1.3 million a year, even if it wasn't what I used to make or what I'd like to make.

Get a grip, you guys!