It’s with a heavy heart that we find out that former Army Black Knight hockey player Major Tom Kennedy was killed in action in action in Afghanistan on Wednesday by a suicide bomber. RIP Major Kennedy - you will be missed. [USCHO.COM]
Greg Boysen, Blackhawk Up --- All the wounds from the last lockout that cost us the entire 2004-05 season have all but healed. If Bettman and the owners screw this up the damage will be catastrophic. If there is another work stoppage you can count on contraction not being far behind. There are too many small market teams that are struggling enough as it is and will not survive a lockout. I want to believe that the owners and the players know all of this and will reach an agreement without costing us any playing time, I really do. The problem is, I have no faith in anything that Gary Bettman is in charge of. So my message to Bettman and the owners and Donald Fehr, of the players union, is to do the right thing. No body makes money when there are no games being played. If the momentum of the NHL continues going in the right direction there will be plenty of money to go around for everybody.Ryan Lambert of Puck Daddy has a blog post on who the fans are blaming for the latest dust up in the labor negotiations. Apparently, I am not the only one that thinks that Bettman is a polarizing and unlikable figure.
Ryan Lambert, Puck Daddy --- [Gary] Bettman, of course, would never ever ever ever ever bring up the word "lockout." Never once. History tells us the preferred NHL language is "work stoppage," and while it's a semantical argument, it's easy to see how much Bettman looms over these proceedings. And apparently, it's far harder to see past the bright spotlight he constantly pulls to himself and spot the strings being pulled by warhawk owners like Jeremy Jacobs and Ed Snider, who want to extract a pound of flesh from the players. The latter party's biggest misstep in all this seems to have been simply adhering to the rules and taking the lunatic $100 million contracts now routinely proffered them by, you know, owners, and they must be made to pay for it.According to the betting site BOVADA.COM, Here are the Odds to win the 2013 Stanley Cup (Current Odds as of 8/2/12) Pittsburgh Penguins 8/1 New York Rangers 9/1 Vancouver Canucks 11/1 Los Angeles Kings 12/1 Philadelphia Flyers 13/1 Chicago Blackhawks 14/1 Detroit Red Wings 15/1 Boston Bruins 16/1 St. Louis Blues 16/1 Minnesota Wild 18/1 San Jose Sharks 20/1 Buffalo... If a guy was smart and had some extra money laying around I would put some money on the Boston Bruins.
A quick survey conducted around 5:30 p.m. of tweets using the word "lockout" found that fans and media alike were firmly focusing their venom on Bettman himself. More than half the tweets that loaded immediately menioned dastardly, mustache-twirling Bettman by name. Adam Proteau's use of the word "bully" is especially provocative. As though Bettman kicked Donald Fehr's chair out from under him just as he was about to sit down.
Meanwhile, the number of tweets that used the word "owners" were mentioned in just three (here, here, and here, the latter of which still mentions Bettman).
According to CBC there are a "limited number" of spots are available after some on the waitlist got season tickets for the 2012-13 season.
It would appear that Philadelphia Flyers forward and player representative Scott Hartnell is less than thrilled with the NHL owners – welcome to the club so am I and thousands of other NHL hockey fans.
James Wrabel, New York Rangers Blog --- “To use Gary [Bettman’s] own words, it’s a systemic issue,” Hartnell said this week. “He doesn’t want to look at the rich teams or the teams that are losing money. He wants to look at them all together which is a total 180 from what it was seven years ago.
“It’s up to us to see if it’s feasible or not. But you look at the rollback and percentage they want and it’s more concessions then we gave up last time around.”
