|
Cancellation reaction
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Here is some of the reaction from around the league and the
media concerning NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's cancellation of the 2004-05 NHL
season on Wednesday.
| Bill Guerin, Dallas Stars
forward and NHLPA vice-president |
| I think everybody is in a state of shock. |
| Brian Burke, Former
Vancouver Canucks GM |
| This might be the worst day in the history of the NHL. The Rocket
Richard riot, the flu epidemic ... nothing compares to this. |
| Steve Bartlett, Player
Agent |
| I don't care what side you are on or what your political views are
on this matter — there are no winners here. We are all afraid of the
black hole that we may be falling into. |
| Mike Lopresti, USA Today |
| So hockey is dead. A lot of you probably didn't even know it was
sick. But gather round anyway. You don't see self-destruction like
this every day. It's like viewing the wreckage after somebody tried to
play chicken with a freight train.
It does not require a workable knowledge of the icing rule to understand
what a colossal folly this turned out to be. A bloody labor war between
a union with an average salary of $1.8 million, and owners whose ticket
prices for a family of four have begun to resemble car payments.
All this in a sport that has no mass television appeal, no traditional
roots outside the northern tundra, and is devoutly ignored in broad
swaths of its home continent. Put it this way: How empty would your
neighborhood sports bar be if everyone had to leave who couldn't name
one Columbus Blue Jacket? |
|
Steven Smith, Philadelphia Inquirer |
When you barely generate any network or cable ratings, when your
revenue from broadcasting rights remains stagnant and unimpressive, when
a failure to market your sport becomes so bad that finger-pointing
between management and players becomes as habitual as taking slapshots,
you suffer the same consequences the National Hockey League suffered
Wednesday afternoon.
The cancellation of a season. With few who even care.
After all these years, all the limited the fanfare, all that time of
playing fifth-fiddle to football, basketball, baseball and, yes, even
NASCAR, the NHL and its commissioner, Gary Bettman, finally stood out,
becoming the first North American sport to cancel its entire season. |
| Mark Purdy, San Jose
Mercury News |
Hockey has a reputation as the fastest sport. Wednesday, it was also
the stupidest. Because it couldn't move fast enough.
After a series of last-minute proposals by owners and the players' union
went nowhere, the league decided to pull the plug, deciding it couldn't
negotiate quickly enough to save any portion of this season.
Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner, said only one thing that made sense
during an hourlong media session at which he officially nuked the
season.
"The shame of this is, our fans deserve better,'' Bettman said.
To which someone could retort: How many can be left after the last few
months? |
| Bob Gutowski, former
president of Madison Square Garden |
| "One of the benefits of being the NHL is you have less fans to bring
back. That' s the harsh reality." |
| Mitch Albom, Detroit Free
Press |
Know this: If the season is dead, it's because Gary Bettman wanted
it dead. The commissioner and the owners he represents won this war with
the players as surely as Sitting Bull beat Custer at Little Big Horn.
All that's left is the scalping. And it seems that Bettman won't be
happy until he's waving those scalps in the air and screaming, "Hear me,
oh, Ice Gods, I claim everything!"
Look. The owners wanted a salary cap. They got one. They wanted pay
cuts. They got 24 percent. They wanted recognition that the game can't
go on under their greedy watch, because they can't control their
free-agent appetites - fine, they got that, too.
And they're gonna chuck it all over $6.5 million? |
| Wes Goldstein, CBS
Sportsline |
If Bob Goodenow thought dealing with the league was tough, wait
until he starts facing his own constituents.
They by now must realize the mistake of following the NHL players
association boss blindly down a thorny garden path. They have lost a
year's worth of wages and possibly their careers. They were told they'd
never have to accept a salary cap and then found themselves doing just
that.
Maybe by then, Goodenow will at least admit to them that the times have
really changed.
Forever.
And as far as his membership is concerned, for the worse. |
| Bob McKenzie, TSN |
| I'm trying now to put this in context. When you think about
Canadian history - not just sporting history - where does it fit in?
You don't want to get ridiculous and say that it's the most important
thing that's ever happened in Canada, because it's not. But by the
same token, hockey is part of the fabric of this society and NHL hockey
is a huge part of that fabric. Now it's not there. It's
ripped and it's torn. We don't know where we're going. We're
heading into really uncertain times. All of sudden all of us are
supposed to be experts on things like impasse and implementation, how
long it might go, who will win, who will lose, linkage and salary caps.
Nobody knows where this thing is going to go because it's going
somewhere it's never gone before - into a big, dark, black hole. |
This page is not affiliated with the Dallas
Stars Hockey Club, the National Hockey League
or the National Hockey League Players' Association
Privacy Statement
|
Contact |
|
|
Indicates Subscriber only
content