Back to where we started.....

Well, 3 successful seasons (depending on how you define 'successful') later, we are right back where we found ourselves in 2004. The NHL lockout that took place during the 04-05 season was all about the owners not wanting to pay players so much when they, themselves, were losing money due to the league's high unpopularity in the United States, and well, i guess the rest of the world. But here we stand just years after the graduation of the 07-08 season, and the salary cap up is up $18 million in just over 3 years. Yowza! That's a lot of sauce....

You have guys like Marian Hossa wanting more than 7 million/yr and guys like Ryan Malone who are worth, at most, 3mil/yr, wanting 5. I must be taking crazy pills because Ryan Malone is not a "skill" player, he is a grinder, a fighter, a hard worker and what I like to call, a "momentum changer." He is NOT a top line forward, but yet he will get top line dollars. To translate this into pop culture terms, you would not pay Tara Reid $5 million for a movie. For those kind of dollars you want to go with someone who has...whats it called....oh yeah, talent; not to mention you'd want someone who did not have a botched boob job and liposuction job you are SURE was perfomred by Kavorkian himself. Her body looks like Chris Farleys ass. Anyways, back to hockey....

Out of the four major sports (NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA), hockey is by far the least popular and lucrative. We all know this, it is no surprise. But what shocks me is that thinking back 5 or 6 years, hockey was so unpopular that if it were a high school student, Screech would be giving it daily beatings in the halls of Bayside High. No one wanted to invest in it, because you were guaranteed to lose money, and no fans wanted part of it because it was about as popular as Saved by the Bell the new class. But we now, finally, have fans and people are coming by the bus-full (gratned, its a small bus, but a bus nonetheless) to see games. So answer me this, why oh why are we starting to pay players tens of millions of dollars so soon???? It blows my mind.

The NHL needs to be cautious of these players salaries. Too much too soon and we are all headed for another lockout and labor disagreement. I, for one, am enjoying post-lockout hockey. I do not need another year without hockey.....the NBA can kiss my ass, it sucks, i won't revert to watching a bunch of assholes pounding their chest like they are king-ding-a-ling everytime they get to the free throw line....fucking snoozefest. So, lets all hope league commisioner Gary Bettman knows what he is doing. He has the IQ of a hangover fart but we gotta have faith. Go Pens.