What do you think about it? Whose side are you on - Players or the Team Owners?
Note: If you do not watch hockey, play hockey, or love the sport. Please do not post here of such posts like 'hockey sucks'. This is not a thread for it.
The whole problem stems from the owners who kept giving out larger and larger contracts to players. If someone offers to double your salary, are you going to turn them down?
Why? The owners and Gary Bettman caused this through their folly. Spending more than they had and expanding into markets with no interest in their sport is a recipe for failure......
The league needs a cap of some kind (like other sports), but they should drop at least six teams as well.
Bettman and the league are idiots who gave the players way too much money and expanded into way too many cities. Phoenix needed an NHL team?! One team in Florida maybe, but two? Nashville?!! Another problem the league has: teams competing for high draft picks and making no real attempt to get better (Panthers, Blue Jackets, Penguins, etc.).
Its all the players, owners fault and also the states did not generate money for their teams so thats why some of them are close to being bankrupt or whatever. but the people that are suffering from this are the canadians.
its just the states....ottawa has one of the best and most exciting teams in the league and there bankrupt...i blame the players more than the owners....your paying crybabies like jagre 9 mill a year for just whining alone.....whats wrong with having something like a 2 million dollar salary base than you can earn like another 3 or 5 million in incintives?...players wont do that cause they would have to actullay EARN all there money
when players become stars they would demand more money and the owners have nothing else to do but give them so much money because they dont want them to leave.
The owners didn't have to give out contracts as large as they did in may cases. Doubling a players salary? He better have scored 40-50 goals the last four seasons.....
The league shouldn't have expanded into areas where there is no interest in the sport. That was just plain stupid. Most of the teams are in the States and most of them do fairly well except for those that were poorly thought-out.