Something Different

Time to run another play.

We know the NHL can cancel like nobody's business. They can cancel regular season games, all-star games, playoffs, Stanley Cup competition - hell, these guys have proven they can cancel entire seasons if they can't get their way with the NHL Players Association.

But can they do something more creative, more imaginative, than that?

Already, the league has cancelled two months of the 2012-13 season. October is gone, November is gone. 

This Friday, everyone is expecting the Winter Classic, a battle between the Leafs and Red Wings Jan. 1 at the Big House on the University of Michigan campus, to get the chop.

Well, here's a chance for the NHL to prove it can do something different. Run another play, as it were.

Yes, there's financial considerations, and logistical ones, that make this Friday a meaningful deadline for this event, the first one in which the league and NBC will actually acknowledge the Canadian content of the NHL by including a Canadian team, the Leafs.

It will cost the NHL not to cancel, that we know.

But after pouring millions down the sinkhole that is the Phoenix Coyotes for four years, why not make a small investment in the game and NOT cancel the Winter Classic?

At least, not just yet.

Don't cancel it, and in so doing, make it an olive branch held out to the players. Don't cancel the Winter Classic and simultaneously offer to sit down with the players for serious bargaining ASAP, something that hasn't happened at all yet.

The league wants to negotiate off its last proposal. Well, the Fehr Bros. said this week that they're willing to talk about that. So talk.

This is an easy one for the NHL, to tell hockey fans that it treasures this particular event (I'm no fan, but folks do seem to like it) and that it's willing to take a financial hit to extend the deadline for cancellation to, say, Nov. 16th.

Again, there are logistical considerations. If this thing is going to happen as the full-blown two-week festival that is planned, they've got to get the ball rolling soon.

But two weeks and a few hundred thousand bucks shouldn't be enough to kill everything.

Players have been able to say for weeks now that they just want to play. Well, this would be a way for the league to counter that and say it just wants to play.

And can do more than just cancel, can do more than just bludgeon the players and in so doing, bludgeon the game.

 

 

Comments

[Leslie]

The Winter Classic is the league's marque event, but I disagree with Mr Cox's call to save it. Sadly, indifference may be our best long-term strategy. I don't want to pay 300$ to see a game in Toronto or Montreal just so that people in Florida or Phoenix can get free tickets when they order a pizza.

One of the details of the league's current bargaining position is they want to further boost transfer payments to non-performing markets (in the friggin' desert for example).

Canadians are being taken for granted. I hope, the longer they continue to disrespect us the greater the chance we can reclaim our game. Yup, we need a new league. Bettman's NHL is bloated and broken.

[cbx]

As someone lucky enough to have tickets, I'd prefer to know if this is going to happen sooner rather than later. Many people will be travelling over the holidays to attend which means plans need to be made and deposits paid etc. Persoanlly, I'd like to make other plans if this is not going to happen rather than wait around for this greedy group of rich people to reaach some form of agreement. The fans are being held hostage and being dangled. The NHL owes it to the fans to not use us as a bargaining chip and simply cancel the event sooner rather than later.

[Geoff Read]

A pox on the NHL and its owners.

[Derek]

AS someone with tickets, I hope it's cancelled. I don't even want to go anymore. I've had enough giving these chumps my money. Cancel it, give me my $800 back so I can spend it on season tickets and merchandise for the Toronto Rock, and an online subscription for watching the QMJHL or OHL.

[James]

Yeah, hockey in part of the US, where as you say, order a pizza and you get free hockey tickets, is much like the Raptors in T.O. In fact if your order a pizza in T.O you get free Raptor tickets now, not kidding

[ajp1946]

Unfortunately, Gary Bettman has shown that his preferred method of negotiation involves confrontation, intimidation and ultimatums. I expect him to cancel the Winter Classic which will harm hockey's image in the United States and I don't expect this will have one iota of impact on the players.
However, from another point of view Bettman is probably the most disliked of the commisioners of the four major professional sports - there is no accurate barometer for this other than the volume of boos when he steps on to the ice at the end of the season to award the Stanley Cup, regardless of the arena. So in terms of his profile with the fans, how much worse can it get.