Kudos to Rob Ray for having the guts to stand up and say he's ready to cross the thin blue line.

Oh oh! You mean the Bob is wrong? Seems like it as some of the Dolphins refute Goodenow's cap claim. Wake up, Bob. Since 80% of your guys make below NHL average salaries now, who are you really protecting?

Finally, a player (or former NHL player) speaks out to make the case for the NHLPA encouraging its members to become scabs in Europe. Way to show some guts, Corey Hirsch!

And in the words of Little Walter, Boom Boom Out go the Lights on the NHLPA. Every day now we're reading about how the 80% of the guys who make less than the average salary are getting intolerant of the NHLPA, which is run mostly by guys in the upper 20% of earners. Actually, only about 3% of the guys are the salary problem.

You go, boys.....

And for you Little Walter fans:The Online Blues:Little Walter-Boom Boom, Out Go The Lights blues lyrics.. Sing along!

Superb column from ESPN's Damien Cox where it's obvious the NHLPA's attitude is principles, schminciples. Hopefully the more the NHLPA hypocrisy gets brought to the fore like this the faster this will all be over.

Good report this morning from USA Today on how Players are warming up to less pay, more fun. Personally, I don't understand why these guys will take 10% of what they'd make in the NHL and spend half of that to insure themselves so they don't have to play here. Is the NHLPA telling them this is a good idea?

Think again....

Kind of a lull here so I thought I'd pass along the CBC's excellent section that has a nice overview of this mess.

Underneath that mound of red hair lurks a surprising intellectwhich Mike Commodore demonstrates as he says he'll accept a salary cap.

Hopefully his union rep and his union are listening.....

Hopefully TSN's report means something and the two sides are talking, or at least thinking about it. Maybe it's dawning on the players that their union has already cost them 23% of their salaries and that they're not going to make that up in the new deal.

How about a little common sense?TSN has a nice report on Hockey legend Guy Lafleur and his thoughts on the lockout. While I disagree that the NHL needs to start over, much of what he has to say makes a ton of sense:

Lafleur said he can't understand why so many NHL players - 231 as of Wednesday - are skating in Europe for a couple of hundred thousand dollars and won't play at home for a couple of million dollars. Last year's league average salary in the NHL was $1.8 million US.

I don't know how much Guy made in his career but I guarantee you that a third line skater makes more than he did, probably even with inflation figured in.

Obviously not members of the NHLPA...although deep in my heart I believe this is exactly how all the NHLPA members feel.... 

Hopefully someone out there reads French and can enjoy this piece on Mike Ribeiro. In it, according to TSN's translation, he says that he doesn't seem bothered by the idea of a salary cap. The Journal reports that, last spring, Ribeiro said the salaries of $11-million US were ridiculous and that no player should have a salary of more than $6-million.

Well....DUH!

More on Scott Gomez who is now an Alaska Ace. Just goes to show you that the players want to play - why is the NHLPA stopping them?

This is great! The NHL goes right after the distortions the NHLPA have been making out of everything. You can only hope that the players read this and ask the right questions at their meeting between the union and players reps.

Now here is an interesting dilemma. American owners of European teams who just happen to be NHL owners as well. What's a player to do? If you're Erik Cole you get ready to buy your way out of your deal to come home!

This guy Mark makes a good point in this post - sort of what I was getting to the other day.

Scotty? Mr. Scott? What are you thinking up there? Good God, man - beam me up! Better yet, beam yourself back to reality! Before you get hurt!

USA Today writes this morning about how Cup's appeal remains bright. Apparently not bright enough to attract the NHLPA back to reality....

Who would have thunk...but I guess Poland is near the Czechs.... 

A story from FOXSports.com reminding us hockey-starved fans that we can turn to the AHL for our fix. Of course, to me the most telling quote in the piece is from a player:

"It's frustrating to see an NHL player, who's never played in my league and isn't in my union (PHPA), come here and take someone's job."

I'm sure that statement is being made in Swedish, Czech, Italian, German, and Finnish as we speak....

I'm not sure if you all have bookmarked this, but it's Yahoo! Sports' NHL Lockout Log and it seems to be a pretty good daily update. Of course, in this case that's sort of an oxymoron.

Check out the link on this log to the "draft contingency" plan - not so much for the plan as for the interesting question: "Members of the players' association remain united and committed to avoiding a salary cap, but there is disagreement about whether playing in other leagues shows proper union loyalty. The disagreement won't wear down the union's resolve, but it's worth keeping an eye on whether factions form on each side of the issue."

No kidding.

Here's a response to the NHLPA meeting announcement that is probably a lot closer to the truth than we'll ever know. Thanks Boltsmag!

This opinion that Bob doesn't want you to hear/read courtesy of Off Wing Opinion: Pronger Speaks Out

This morning's uninformed rip comes from the best goaltender in the game, Martin Brodeurcourtesy of the NY Post. Marty says that the "players made a good effort with the concessions we gave".

Gee, Marty, maybe if you guys had been willing to guarantee them, that would be true. But according to both sides, when the NHLPA put that offer on the table they weren't willing to stand behind their projected savings to assure that they and the owners aren't facing this problem again in a year - maybe with 2 or 3 fewer teams.

Marty, while I'm not a huge Devils fan, I know you are the best. You deserve the best from your union and they're lying to you. About this for sure and you might want to find out about what else when you guys meet Nov. 2.

Great piece about the NHL players being unrealistic about revenue from the Buffalo News.

So Bob McKenzie sums it up pretty well this morning. Nothing's happening - lots of light, no heat.

Hockey is the best game because you have to be selfless to play. There's no room for a guy who puts himself above the team or the game. So what the hell is going on here? This, it seems, is all about the union saying "what can I get for me and screw the team, the fans, the little guys who work in and around the rink, etc."

Are the Owners blameless? No - they made some boneheaded moves over the last decade and I think they'd 'fess up to that. But they're locked into a system. That system forces, say Calgary to behave as if they had the Leafs Nation's revenues if they want to compete over the long term. You might not believe that but when Kipper's contract is up and he goes to arbitration, his agent is going to compare him to Belfour among others and argue that he should get a salary that is OK for the Leafs but is unaffordable by the Flames. Do the Flames have a choice? Can't they walk away? Sure - and piss off the fans, the media (who'll kill them), and the other players on their club, and make themselves less competitive. Some choice.

We all have to live with salary caps of some sort. Sometimes they're supplemented by incentives (careful - learn from the mistakes of the rookie "cap") but for the most part it boils down to no business I know pays out 75% of its revenues in labor costs. None.

Oh yeah. Except the NHL.

Yes, Virginia, there really is a boogie man and his name is Bob...

Gee, the PA doesn't care about the overall health of the clubs? I'm shocked...SHOCKED! (sounds like Claude Rains) in Casablanca (1942) as he tells Rick he's... well, you get it...

Why not a little hockey with a Latin twist? For those of you in Tejas, you have to chance to see the Mexican national hockey team play a bunch of CHL teams.

Jose Sakic? Martin Santa Louis? You never know....

Now HERE are some guys that get it!

Home Ice - Beer League Hockey

So here's a mind blower.

I think Mike Danton is getting sentenced soon, maybe today. Weird case, right?

So I find this from last April (thanks Steve Simmons and the Toronto Sun):

THE QUESTION never has been appropriately answered: Exactly what is the connection between Bob Goodenow and David Frost?

We know that Frost, the controversial agent and centre of the Mike Danton murder-for-hire storm, coached the son of Goodenow, head of the NHL Players' Association in what was then the Metro Toronto Hockey League?

We know that Goodenow played a part in establishing the relationship between Frost and player agent Mike Gillis, a relationship that no longer exists.

And we know that Goodenow's Players' Association, despite protests from a number of its certified members, allowed Frost to be certified as a player agent even though he had pleaded guilty to assaulting one player and had been previously suspended indefinitely from both the MTHL and the Ontario Hockey Association.

Would anyone else of such dubious qualifications have been certified?

There are even some suspicions that the released letter of support of Danton from St. Louis players came not from the players themselves, but from their association.

Goodenow is in no way connected to any criminal activity in the case against Danton, but his long-term support of the troublesome Frost in more than curious.

Players should be asking these questions themselves.

Are you kidding me? I thought the NHL players were fed up with union guys who railroaded their organization (seeAlan Eagleson.)

I must be the last guy to pick up on this stuff.

Here's something I'm unclear about. If Jagr and others are in Europe during NHL lockout, where are the guys whose jobs they took? And would the NHLPA be just as complacent about other guys coming in and taking their guys' jobs while they're on their European Vacations? Somehow I doubt that....

Oh yeah, boys. While you're meeting to figure out how to spend the money you don't have coming in, how about think about the service workers who are feeling the pinch, a whole lot more than you. And this is repeated in 29 other cities.

Aww, isn't that nice? The NHLPA to meet with player reps Nov. 2 so they can all sit around and sing Kumbaya and tell themselves that losing a third of their salaries which, GENIUSES, they're not going to make up with wage increases is a good plan.

``The NHLPA has scheduled a meeting with all player representatives on Nov. 2 in Toronto as part of our ongoing information updates during the owners' lockout,'' senior director Ted Saskin said Thursday. Information updates? About what? "We're still not talking! Franco is still dead!"

Come to your senses, boys. Please.

While I totally applaud Andrew Ference for speaking his mind, (although obviously not as much as this guy)he's a bit off base on why there haven't been phone calls. Neither the NHL nor the NHLPA want to make the call because it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the other guy.

Sad that you can't even take the high road.

Help....

In case you were wondering, here are the two guys that are talking to everyone except each other - Bill and Ted. Ironic, isn't it? Fixing the NHL's financial situation really WOULD be an excellent adventure.

Anyway, this article does a good job of telling you who they are. We hear a lot about Gary and Bob (Bettman and Goodenow, respectively). These are the guys who really have to get it done. Lockout foes in search of key

Here's a guy who gets it. Karch's House of Windbaggery No Key in Sight.

As should anyone who has checked out the issues....

Locked out.

I've run out of fingers and toes counting the days and now I'm running out of patience.

I'm not going to lie to you: I'm 100% in the NHL's corner on this labor dispute. It is a fairly simple question. How much money will the NHL players take out of the revenue pot. That pot, even by the NHL Players' Association's admission, has grown substantially over the last 10 years. So there really isn't a problem with the NHL's health.

Where there is a problem is in where the money goes. The NHL hired the former Chairman of the US SEC to do an audit and he found that around 75% of those revenues go to the players. I don't know what company you work for, but I guarantee you that your take is nowhere near 75%. The Players Association can bitch that the owners are hiding money, and they might be, but every independent person who has looked over their books has said that if they are hiding anything, it's not significant (I'll put those links up later - I'm too damn frustrated right now).

The union can't seem to get it through their heads that no guy with a lot of money, or a bank, or a fund, or you or me is going to invest MILLIONS in a business that promises no return and is a depreciating asset. I mean, if you can't get cash flow and you can't get something that's worth more tomorrow than it is today, why the hell would you want to invest?

Check out this article which does a decent job of laying out the situation. The PA guy keeps talking about a free market. Right. Not as long as there is arbitration. Not as long as you scream collusion every time the owners actually DO try and rein in the salaries. Not as long as there are qualifying offers. That's crap.

I'd tell them all to shut up but that's what they're doing now. They've shut up. And that sucks.