Thoughts on a 4-point weekend

Back-to-Back wins leave Wild fans wondering, 'Could this be for real?'

Two down. And only 46 to go.

As the abbreviated NHL season of 2013 unwinds across North America, three things are becoming apparent:

1. The Vancouver Canucks are in serious trouble. As are the Detroit Red Wings, NY Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers, and any team whose games are shown on NBC twice in one weekend.

2. The Edmonton Oilers and St. Louis Blues are as good as advertised. And, the Calgary Flames are as bad as feared.

3. The Minnesota Wild are living up to the lofty expectations to which the franchise is being held to by their fans. So far, anyways.

The Wild, having dispatched the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 Saturday night, then turned around and then made Zach Parise's first goal with the Wild stand up to a 1-0 win Sunday night against the Dallas Stars, in no small part due to the shutout work of Josh Harding, backup goalie extraordinaire. Harding's 7th career shutout came with 25 saves against a Dallas team who had won at home the night before.

So, what to think? Or, is it just too early to have any opinion whatsoever?

The next six games should separate wheat from chaff, as the Wild play the Nashville Predators, Red Wings, Blues, Columbus Blue Jackets, Chicago Blackhawks, and Anaheim Ducks. In the next ten days. With three of those six games in St. Paul. After eight games, or 1/6th of the schedule having been played by then, the cream should rise to the top in the Western Conference.

At least, we HOPE it will. The contenders and the pretenders will sort themselves over the first half of this abbreviated season; then March and April should be about playoff positioning.

All this, while teams are still trying to sort things out. The lack of a real pre-season has not helped any team. The West, especially, is already starting to sort itself out. That's why winning early is key. Every win now is worth two (or more) in April, in my opinion.

So, Wild fans, sit back, and relax. Until the next game. Because it will come sooner, much sooner than even WE are ready for.

Grudge? WHAT grudge?

Overwhelming support for Minnesota Wild return runs Ticketmaster out of seating for Wednesday night inter-squad scrimmage

What would happen if the Minnesota Wild held a scrimmage, one where they actually flew in the Houston Aeros on a charter, opened it up for free, and then no one showed up to see it?

We definitely won't know this week. And, we may never know.

The Wednesday night scrimmage, the second (of two) scheduled this week at Xcel Energy Center as the Wild start their abbreviated training camp, has run out of General Admission tickets. Literally.

The Wild announced shortly after 7:00 PM Sunday night, that there were no more tickets available for the public, as they were holding the rest back for Season Ticket Holders, many of whom would not be able to get to their Wild accounts until they arrived at work on Monday.

The fact that the Wild ran out of seats for the public, might show that 'all is forgiven' for the 113-day lockout, which officially ended late Saturday night as the NHL and the NHLPA agreed to a new, 10-year (hopefully) labor agreement. Then again, it just might be the $10 food voucher that attendees will receive upon entering the arena.

So, with a full house of 18,000-plus expected, the Wild enter the shortened 48-game season with unbridled optimism, as this season features the most talent this team has seen in its' 13-year history.

So we will see what will actually happen on Wednesday. We may see you there. If you're lucky enough to grab a seat.

We're baa-ack! (Sort of...)

The lockout is over.

Labor peace has washed over the contentious relationship between the NHL and its' players. But as many others already this morning have mentioned, there are no winners in this protracted, farcical scenario. Only losers.

The NHL Owners have lost the trust of the players, the very employees that they make their obscene amounts of money off of, possibly forever. The turning of the owner-player relationship at the highest levels of the sport, into an adversarial exercise in 'He said, He said', dragged the dispute into rarely-seen levels of discourse.

The NHLPA have also lost the trust of the owners, to help build and expand the reach of the game thru their own efforts, and the fact that the game was taken away from North America's hockey fanbase with very little apology or rancor has little, if any, effect on any player or players' agent.

And the fans? Those who pay the freight for both sides to enjoy the record revenues of the last five seasons?

BOTH SIDES ignored the fans. BOTH SIDES ignored the facts. BOTH SIDES ignored reason, and all sort of common sense.

And the fans are the ones coming out the worst in all this. Yes, we hockey lovers are a very gullible lot; we will return whenever they throw open the gates. But we are, indeed, jaded about the sport we love as we wait for the revised, 50-game schedule to be released (sometime today or, more likely, tomorrow). "Oh, this will be the BEST hockey."

Yeah, right. Now show me that you care. Show me that you want me back. Show me that you, Craig Leipold, Wild CEO, want me to keep spending my entertainment dollar at your establishment.

Or, just let me get my money back after the season ends, and let's go our separate ways.

Time to put up, or shut up, Minnesota Wild.

OK, NHL, you've lost most of us

It hasn't been that fun being an NHL fan these days, has it?

You know that in most cases, nothing else will do. Not college hockey, not high school,. nothing else. And certainly, not the evil basketball. The NFL is doing its' job in occupying the American sports consciousness; but north of the 49th parallel, the CFL has suffered thru the 100th Grey Cup, and now becomes a nation lying in wait for its' heritage sport -- professional ice hockey, at its' highest level -- to quit being another case study in bad labor/management relations, and get back to what it does best: Entertaining fans, and giving them something to while away cold Northern winters (except in the Bettman-promoted Southern markets, where they while away somewhat less-than-cold Southern winters).

I, for one, have kind of gone into 'shut-down' mode: 'get back to me when you have some REAL news to report'. I don't believe anything that either side says any more. No amount of grandstanding, posturing, or other attempts to show the public you're 'trying to come to agreement' will sway most fans. We've all just moved on to other things, other pursuits, other interests.

We fans are saving our money. No pre-game restaurant dinners, no post-game refreshments, no money spent on parking, gas, souvenirs. No new items from the 'team store'. (Or, from any store, if that item has any NHL or NHL team logo on it.) And that has its' down side as well; layoffs at numerous restaurants, bars, stores, etc., going into the Christmas/New Year's holiday season. The fact that until now, the Minnesota Wild's staff has been somewhat insulated from the rest of their owners' recalcitrance, pales in comparison to the 600 Xcel Energy Center part-time employees, who comprise the Wild's game day staff. Most of them took these jobs as second (or, in some cases, third) jobs, to earn a few extra dollars to make their lives that much better.

Now, even the Wild's permanent, full-time staff is being affected; beginning after the New Year, their workweek will be shortened by 20%, as the NHL's own full-time staff has been since the start of the dispute, along with several other member clubs. Sadly, the staffers have no one to blame, except their own bosses; if they would actually come to an agreement, come ready to really negotiate, not to 'Draw a line in the sand', then turn and walk away when the other side says 'No' to the latest demand, this would all have been behind us a long time ago.

The fact that neither side -- owners and players -- is willing to give even an inch shows what a disasterous condition the NHL is in right now. The fact that two of the most stubborn lawyers on Earth -- Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr -- lead the two sides, behooves most of us to believe that the final solution will not be achieved this season. Nor maybe even next season.

But, for now, just go ahead, NHL. Just vote next week (in your Board of Governors meeting on Wednesday and Thursday, in New York) to take this already-moribund season off life support. Kill the victim so the disease of the labor dispute can be cured. Then, after the air has been cleared, let's get back to the business at hand.

Let's play hockey.

I was supposed to be in Newark, but...

Continuing labor dispute, ego-driven negotiations doom NHL 2012-13 season; will they EVER play again?

Well, today is Day 57 of the NHL Lockout. They're talking, albeit begrudingly; the fans are just flat out in limbo, just waiting to see what will actually come out of talks and the shuttling between Toronto (NHLPA headquarters) and New York (NHL HQ). Granted, the interruption that was Hurricane Sandy (Ok, ok...Superstorm Sandy, for you weatherheads out there) did put a few days' distance in the talks, but the loggerheads that have occurred between NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and the Fehr Brothers, the two-headed negotiators for the Players' Association, need to be put behind them, and we all need to just MOVE ON.

For Minnesota Wild fans, this weekend was supposed to be a stiff test of what the Wild was to have become: last night, the Wild should have been in Detroit, facing the Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena; tonight, a 5:00 PM (EST) contest against none other than the New Jersey Devils was to have taken place at 'the Rock', a.k.a. the Prudential Center in Downtown Newark. These would have been games number 4 and 5 of the Wild's then-killer 6-game Eastern road swing.

The Wild should have been then traveling down the Northeast Corridor, to the City of Brotherly hate Love, to take on the Flyers Tuesday night, at the First Union Wachovia Wells Fargo Center. The fact that the lockout came when it did might actually, from the perspective of the last two weeks, worked out in the Wild's favor, should the lockout actually end this winter and the team begin playing again.

This was to be the biggest WRT road trip in three seasons (since the NHL Premiere trip to Helsinki). Now, there's no trip, no games, nothing. I just sit here, and save my $ for that rainy (or, since we are in Minnesota, snowy) day. No tickets, no flights, no hotels, nothing. Just staying home and waiting for Messrs. Bettman and Fehr to get done doing their thing.

C'mon guys. Please, figure this thing out. Before I get absolutely claustrophobic here at home, watching the Vikings lose. Again.

Lying in wait...or waiting for lies?

Posturing as the order of the day instead of meaningful compromise rule, as NHL lockout extends beyond three-week mark

Ok, guys, You've both made your points.

As the NHL lockout surpasses the 21-day mark, the owners (led by Gary Bettman) and the players (led by Donald Fehr) seem no closer to a compromise, that will allow teams to start the 2012-13 campaign.

Posturing seems to be the order of the day. 'We're ready to negotiate, when THEY are', seems to be the favorite sound bite out of the post-meeting press conferences. No meaningful information is ever uttered; no progress on the meaningful (read: money) issues is made. Yet, the two sides are still talking (albeit mostly on the phone, as opposed to in person, across an actual negotiating table.)

The fans? Most are mostly bored with both sides, and have moved onto other things (namely, NFL football) to occupy their sports watching time. Some have just tuned out altogether, and are just getting on with life. Yet, the two sides cannot see the forest of compromise for all the stands of trees still in the way of a meaningful agreement.

So, the best thing to say to both sides, at least at this point, is...

Call me when you're ready to play, guys. I may still be here...or not...

Thirteen days...and counting...

Despite growing public condemnation, owners, Bettman adamant about regressing NHL hockey despite record profits, revenues

Thirteen days to go. Thirteen days.

On Saturday, Sept. 15th, the owners and their representative, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, will lock the players out for the third time in Bettman's 19-year tenure.

There will be no NHL hockey. Players will be left to fend for themselves, while the owners will squirrel away cash to tide their franchises over until a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is agreed to. Meanwhile, Bettman still gets paid his reportedly $8,000,000 million annual salary. (By contrast, Donald Fehr, the ex-MLBPA head now running the NHLPA, gets no salary until -- and, unless -- a new CBA is agreed to. This is the way most lawyers work, on contingency.)

Meanwhile, thousands of part-time NHL team employees, and employees of businesses who depend on hockey -- bars, restuarants, hotels, even transit authorities and airlines (who charter planes for NHL team travel) -- are laid-off or have their hours sharply reduced. The fans are disillusioned yet again, for the third time in a generation. All for the unbridled greed of a few owners (who don't want to revenue share) and the mis-steps of Bettman himself (whose 'Southern Strategy' has been proven to be an unqualified failure).

Marginal players -- not the superstars, who have provisions built into their contracts so they will get paid (or, already have) regardless whether they play or not -- will suffer. Despite the NHLPA's two-year warning to squirrel away cash for a long lockout, some may have not done so. Now, it just may be too late.

No one on one side wants to listen to the other side. Talks broke off last Friday, with no new sessions scheduled. Compromise? With the owner who already has engulfed, and devoured, more than half the cable TV industry in the USA? With the owner who feeds more people in stadiums and arenas, than any other? With the owner, who is still playing with Union Pacific Railroad money? With the de facto owner of the Phoenix franchise? Hell no, they won't compromise. No one wants to compromise on the owners side. They all seem united to keep hockey from the fans, after a 2011-2012 season which was one of the best, start-to-finish, in the history of the League.

As has been pointed out many, many times...the current, expiring CBA is the one that the owners wanted IN THE FIRST PLACE. The players already gave back 24% of their salaries. Now they're being asked to give back nearly the same amount...again. Since the loopholes in the current CBA have been exploited (yes, including signing Ryan Suter and Zach Parise by the Minnesota Wild), now you're trying to put the proverbial horse back in the barn, not by the carrot, but soley by the (hockey) stick?

Sorry, NHL owners, but this time, you lose the biggest court battle of all, that of the court of public opinion. And you lose it not for what the other side has done, but what your own side has not done. On one hand, your teams are going along, trying to sell tickets, merchandise, etc., like absolutely nothing is wrong. On the other hand, your personnel departments are ready to hand out lay-off notices and pink slips like a post-war parade. If you would face the reality of the situation, stop the subterfuge and negotiate in good faith, this could all be stopped, dead in its' tracks. And the hockey season could be saved for the fans, fans whom the Commissioner said were, 'the best fans in the world.'

Well, aren't we?