Hang Up Those Skates, Season's Cancelled

It's not like it matters at this point, but if you care, the National Hockey League cancelled their 2004-05 season yesterday after five months of locking out their players. Gothamist can only think of a few losers, none of which are a team owner or a member of the player's union. Fans, employees for the teams, vendors, small businesses, those are the people that lose from this. To us, things like a disagreement over $6.5 million in salary a season don't make sense.

Hockey didn't have a lot of capital to spend in the first place and it is now the first professional sports league in North American to lose a season to labor woes. For Ranger fans, this might actually be a good thing since they seem to have the lowest wins to dollars spent ratio in the league recently. A cancelled season is actually a relief.

NHL Commissioner Gary Betteman says there will be hockey next season, but who cares? If there is hockey next season, the fans should punish both sides by sitting out the whole year, just like the owners and players did this year.

Photo by AP via Newsday

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By tien mao on February 17, 2005 9:33 AM

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sp

read it and weep: NASCAR

zander106

This does make you wonder about the future of team sports in this country. In particular, does this clear the way for a different sport to be the 4th "major" sport? The only other team sport that's left out there with any following would probably be soccer. While I would LOVE if MLS reached the level of popularity that the NHL at least had, it would take some kind of phenom Freddy Adu breakout season this year to make that happen. Especially because World Cup isn't till next year.