By Kayla Steinman, Contributor
Didn’t we just go through a lockout less than 10 years ago? What is there left to argue about? All of this is just a chance to get more money for the owners and more publicity for the sport itself. If a lockout is supposedly underway, then why would a schedule be released for the upcoming season? It’s plain and simple: the NHL owners want more money and want to cut back their players’ wages in order to do so.
Let’s think about this for a second. Who is really getting the short end of the stick, the players or the owners? Neither. The real losers in this battle are the fans that enjoy watching the game because they support their home team. When are these people going to realize that their petty war about money is causing them to lose fans—the very fans that come to their games and ultimately pay their salaries, team profits, and revenues.
There are a lot of lockouts in sports, so there’s no real way of getting around it, but why must the NHL be arguing about pretty much the same thing as they were seven years ago? Didn’t they fix those issues or did they just put duct tape over a hole and now it’s finally starting to peel off? With the war chest fund, a lot of the players are planning to disappear, either back to their home countries to play or even back to the minor leagues. So not only are the owners and the NHL Players’ Association fighting over money problems, but they are going to let players go home and get paid for not even playing in the NHL. With players going back down to the minors to play again, they’re taking chances away from other great athletes that want to play in the NHL.
There may be an upside to players moving down. They are able to teach and show minor league players what the major league is all about. Sure, coaches can tell you how different it’s going to be but when you’re shown what it means to be a hockey player in the NHL, it’s different and it pushes you to play better.
To a lot of people, this lockout is just a way to use propaganda to boost the ratings and get people interested in watching hockey again. There’s so much wrong with this lockout that no one is going to be able to wrap their heads around it any time soon. Within a few weeks, there will be hockey again. We might be losing part of the season, but once the NHL owners realize that their reason for a lockout is ridiculous, the players and owners will shake hands and get back on the ice together.
