[Tiger Fan]

I love hockey but I am so sick of listening to both sides in this ridiculous dispute that I am glad that it is cancelled simply because I wont have to listen to Goodenow, Bettman or any of the idiots on either side for quite some time.

I have sided with the owners throughout the entire dispute despite the fact that I feel Bettman has done nothing but run the NHL into the ground. The owners have done nothing but shoot themselves in the foot over the past decade with ploys like using far too easy to achieve incentives to circumvent the rookie salary scale, throwing obsence amounts of money at role players like Martin Lapointe and Bill Guerin and doing nothing to make the game more appealing to it's fans.

Just one look at the present tv contract with NBC makes it a no-brainer to figure the NHL can not handle 600-700% increases in team payrolls over the course of a decade. The NBA has enjoyed great prosperity with a salary cap. With a salary cap NFL fans in virtually every city (well, maybe excluding Detroit and Arizona) know that their teams can make a legitimate run at a Super Bowl. If it works in those leagues, with huge tv dollars and other revenue sources why can the NHL players association not accept 55-58% of the revenue and an average salary of $1.5 million?

I have no respect for Gary Bettman. I have no respect for Bob Goodenow. But the problem is neither of them have any respect for each other and right from the beginning this was nothing less than a power struggle between these two to see who could win when it should have been how can we both work together to ensure the game is successful and both the players and owners benefit.

We won't see a solution next September unless the players association cracks and they come grovelling back or the NHL gets its way and begins play with replacement players. If that happens you can bet the players will whine and complain about how these 'scabs' are taking thier jobs yet they have no regard for the players in Europe, and the minors who's jobs they so quickly decided to take.

A guy like Chris Chelios is a perfect example why I have no respect for the players in this stupid dispute. He will bad mouth the league and Bettman every chance he gets. He will say no way will he play in an NHL with a salary cap yet he is perfectly willing to join a minor league that has - you guessed it - a salary cap, and take someone's job in the process.

The only group I can respect in all of this crap is the officials. The referees and linesman deserve huge props for not taking jobs away from minor league and amateur officials. I have huge respect for them as a union agreeing to stick together and not treat their minor league counterparts the way a huge number of players have treated theirs.

Blow the whole thing up and start a new National Hockey Association with 12-20 teams in cities that will support a team....screw this Florida and Carolina and Atlanta crap. Get back to Winnipeg and Quebec City. Get a new commissioner to run this league...a Paul Beeston or AHL boss Dave Andrews and start anew. Eliminate the clutch and grab play, add a shoot out for regular season ties and make the game more exciting. Build around Sidney Crosby and open the league to anyone who wants to try out and tell the rest of them to hit the road.

Of course that wont happen. The NHL will try to use replacement players and finally either a settlement will be reached or the union will collapse and we will finally have NHL hockey again in January, 2006 or thereabouts. Of course by then you will likely still have 30 million Canadians interested after a cooling off period but the diehard group of American fans who will still support the game will likely be into single digits.