What the puck?

The NHL labor dispute is finally over. Whoop de doo.

I am a former season ticket holder for the local NHL team, which if you must know, is the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Maybe you've heard of them, perhaps have even seen the movie. 3 seasons. Upper deck, last row, red line. Right in front of the announcers booth. Wicked awesome. Well, it used to be, anyway.

The NHL is the first major sport ever to have an entire season cancelled because of a labor dispute. Only in (North) America. This has hurt not only the players, but all of the employees of the league and the teams whose positions were made obsolete because of the dispute. It also hurt the fans, who bankroll the entire operation by purchasing a bit of diversion from their own lives. Oh yeah, the owners probably lost a few bucks (both Canadian and American).

But, if you were to believe the owners, they probably lost less money during the dispute than they would have if the season would have been played. You see, this labor dispute was not a strike, but a lockout. The owners shut everything down, took their pucks, and went home.

Why, you ask? Because the owners were losing too much money. The players were taking it all. Only they players weren't actually stealing it. It was sort of promised to them by the owners themselves.

Whwhwhwhwhat? Yep. The whole labor dispute is that the players wanted the money contractually owed to them for services to be rendered, and the owners do not want to honor the contracts they signed.

I would like to point out that I am annoyed.

These fat bastards, most of them being billionaires or major coroporations, sign players to contracts and then cancel the whole shebang because they woke and found themselves in bed with one ugly payroll that they were now committed to. How did these clowns get their megabucks in the first place?

But now the whole 'dispute' has been resolved, as the player's union finally caved and succumbed to a 24% pay cut. Now there's a union chief worth reelecting.

All I can say is that it will be a cold day in Anaheim before my ass graces a seat at the pond to watch a team named after a lame kids movie. The owners have earned themselves a 100% revenue cut from yours truly.

In the words of Red Green, "Keep your stick on the ice."