NHL 2004

[vh resurrected]

Roenick said Grab, Grab, Grab. Welcome to today's NHL. Or something to that effect. And goalie equipment has gotten bigger as well. There's hardly any net left to shoot at and if you do get in, it's with a defenseman on your back. Do you play ice, street, roller, or all of the above? I haven't played in a while... too long actually.

[SuckaInA3Piece]

Just street/foot hockey for the most part. If I were to describe what kind of player I am then I'm mostly John Leclair mixed with Donald Brashear and Alexi Kovalev. A weird mix, but those are the guys that I watch the most for different reasons.

[POD GOD]

What's the latest news about the upcoming season? Anybody know? I know everybody's excited about the NFL starting but man...I need to watch hockey during the winter to keep my sanity!

[SuckaInA3Piece]

IRA PODELL

Associated Press

After failing to make any progress toward a new collective bargaining agreement, the NHL owners and players agreed on one point: A lockout seems inevitable.

The players' association made its first proposal to the owners in nearly a year Thursday, but it only seemed to seal the fate that a lockout will be imposed Wednesday when the current deal expires.

Ted Saskin, the NHLPA's senior director, said commissioner Gary Bettman concluded the meeting Thursday by saying, "We weren't even talking the same language."

The NHLPA presented a modified plan during the negotiating session Thursday that it first floated last summer and formally offered on Oct. 1, 2003.

It included a luxury-tax system, a change in the entry-level structure, a plan for revenue sharing, and a 5-percent rollback on current player contracts.

And it all fell on deaf ears.

"We spent four hours, and after waiting 15 months, not only didn't we get a proposal that was not really different, but it was a step backward," said Bill Daly, the NHL's chief legal officer.

A step that can't be afforded if the NHL season is going to start on time. The current deal expires Sept. 15, and no new talks were scheduled.

The point of contention between the sides seems simple. The players claim that Bettman will not agree to a deal that doesn't include a salary cap.

The players are steadfast that they will discuss any structure other than a salary cap to cut the percentage of revenues that are paid out in salaries.

"At some point the owners need to understand the players will never accept a salary cap or any system arbitrarily linking payroll to league revenues," said Vancouver center Trevor Linden, the president of the players' executive committee. "Our proposal was the best chance we saw to save the hockey season."

Saskin said the contract rollbacks will create $100 million in savings. The luxury tax framework would target the spending of specific teams, and the proposed revenue-sharing system - that differed from the players' association initial proposal - was more closely aligned to recent NHL offers, the union said.

Players said the offered changes to the entry level system would generate $60 million in savings to clubs. But Daly countered that the proposal was merely "window dressing" and didn't address problems facing all 30 teams.

Saskin said owners want the lockout because that is the only way they have a chance of getting a salary cap.

It is likely that the season will officially be put in peril next week when the NHL Board of Governors meet in New York.

A lockout could prove worse than the one that lasted 103 days and cut the 1994-95 season nearly in half. Owners have been preparing for that possibility the last several years and have built a $300 million war chest.

"I'm scratching my head as to where to go from here," Daly said.

[img]images/smilies/wutblau.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/wutblau.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/wutblau.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/wutblau.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/wutblau.gif[/img]

[POD GOD]

This sux! [img]images/smilies/wutblau.gif[/img]

[img]images/smilies/icon_ball.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/icon_ball.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/icon_ball.gif[/img]

[SuckaInA3Piece]

TORONTO - They played the World Cup of Hockey championship game last night at the Air Canada Centre. Hours before the game, Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock, an assistant coach for Team Canada, acknowledged that it finally has taken hold that this would be the last hockey game played for a long time.

"For a lot of people, you have been so into this [tournament], you have not made any plans other than to keep going [and play the games]," Hitchcock said. "But now you have to start planning. That's the name of the game. It is going to be a difficult time for us."

Today in New York, the NHL's Board of Governors is expected to rubber-stamp commissioner Gary Bettman's recommendation of a lockout that would begin at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, unless the NHL Players Association accepts a $31 million salary cap as part of a new collective bargaining agreement.

"There is a governors meeting, and it is going to have an impact on everybody," Hitchcock said. "Today is sunshine. Tomorrow is clouds."

Last season, Hitchcock insisted there would not be a work stoppage. Since August, however, he has had the unique perspective of being on the scene in each of the tournament cities while the league and union conducted contract talks. And those talks have gone nowhere.

"After coming here and listening to it, it's not going to happen, to start with," Hitchcock said. "Now whether we play in October, who knows? Everybody is trying to take positives, but when you are in the environment where the meetings take place in cities we're playing in, you come to realize there is a lot of work to be done."

Many of the players at the tournament have been making plans for extended vacations, training in their off-season homes, or going to Europe. Some are joining a four-on-four league that plans to play throughout Canada. Others have talked about a "tour" in which selected NHL players go into towns with junior clubs to play charity games.

Hitchcock isn't worried about his players' training schedule because they were already given detailed off-season regimens by strength coach Jim McCrossin that will continue through the lockout. What he does worry about is a commitment to the program if the lockout is extensive.

"The biggest thing for me as a coach is how does a player keep his enthusiasm to train and skate," Hitchcock said. "He's like the rest of us. He doesn't know what will happen."

The last lockout, in 1994, showed that teams whose players had strong commitments to their training regimens came back and started quickly once the season began.

Jeremy Roenick has an offer to play for the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League. Roenick said his post-concussion headaches would keep him off the ice for the foreseeable future. Yet a legitimate concern would be if someone tries to make a name for himself in another league by taking a run at a star NHL player.

"I can't get into that stuff," Hitchcock said. "I want to make sure they don't get hurt. Whatever you are doing, just don't get hurt. Come back fresh."

For now, coaches are in the same situation as fans, club employees and arena workers - they have no say in the contract talks yet will suffer the consequences.

"It's a helpless feeling, because all we are is observers right now," Hitchcock said.

Loose pucks. Roenick will be evaluated next week in Montreal by neurologist Karen Johnston. Roenick plans to return to Phoenix during the lockout and play golf with former Coyotes teammate Shane Doan. Roenick did a lot of swimming this summer because his headaches are worse when he rides the stationary bike, he said. "Even if we had a season, I would not be ready to play, the way I feel right now," Roenick said... . Various sources say the NHL's $300 million war chest has swelled by more than $20 million when interest is added. So why can't that $20 million be used to pay league office employees and NHL club employees who have already been laid off, as well as the many others who will be laid off once the lockout begins?

[atomicpunk5151]

I've been at the site for about a month and I just noticed the sports forum. Sucka, didn't know you were also a big hockey fan. Very cool. I work as a Ice Hockey instructor out here in California and Play/coach a lot of Ice Hockey. Big JR/Flyer fan as well.

The LOCKOUT starts in a few hours, that sucks. I guess it will save me a few bucks on the Center Ice TV package. At least you guys back there have minor leagues (AHL), we will be out here playing & watching BEER league.

Jeff
Sacramento

[SuckaInA3Piece]

Yea dude, I'm a HUGE hockey fan. It's kinda sick actually! Yea I still have the Philly Phantoms to look forward too. Matter of fact I'm looking into getting season tickets, or atleast a 12 game plan. There's no way I could go on without my hockey. Just no way man. It really sucks that this had to happen, and if they think that salaries and revenue sharing is the only problem with today's game, they've got another thing coming.

[POD GOD]

I just find it hard to believe that they couldn't come to some agreement. A lockout doesn't help anybody. I'm totally pissed!! [img]images/smilies/mad1.gif[/img]

[SuckaInA3Piece]

Yea I heard about it before I left work. This really really sucks [img]images/smilies/icon_rant.gif[/img]

[SuckaInA3Piece]

By Bill Lyon

Inquirer Columnist

The pucks remain unfrozen, the rinks de-iced, the Zambonis idle.

The skate blades remain unsharpened, the sticks uncurved, the teeth still in their owners' mouths.

Hockey is trying very hard to self-destruct.

So if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it...

And if a puck drops on the ice and no one is there to see it...

Philosophical pondering aside, the sport that can least afford a labor war now has one.

Hockey has gone away. Probably for a long, long time.

Dead bolts are shut, chains looped and padlocks secured, and the owners and the players of the National Hockey League, who continue to be their own worst enemies, have themselves a lockout.

This is one you could hear coming from a long way off, like, say, a midnight train to Georgia, and each side kept daring the other to stand on the tracks.

Well, they'll both take this hit. A pox on both their houses. They have betrayed their fans. The blame is shared, no sympathy is deserved, and all they have succeeded in doing is crippling the game they profess to love.

Hockey is an acquired taste and has always struggled to find widespread acceptance south of the Canadian border, and now the NHL is going to alienate its loyalists, irritate what bedrock remains in its dwindling fan base.

To its great chagrin, the league is about to discover that absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. For this will be met by most of the sports world with raging indifference.

No hockey? Yawn. Shrug.

Only the hard-core will weep in their breakfast cereal.

Training camp was to begin today and the season was supposed to start in less than a month. Now the most optimistic hope is that a truce can be negotiated, a settlement reached, and some sort of truncated schedule stitched together by January.

But some players report they have been told to prepare for life without their blood sport for at least an entire year, possibly two, and maybe even three.

Hard to envision many fans coming back after that length of time, even the orange and black zealots who have, for more than 30 years, supported the Flyers with an impressive devotion. They will forgive most any transgression and continue to reach into their wallets and dig into their hearts, but to be deprived of their game and their team for a thousand days... well, that would be slashing of the most unendurable sort.

The Wachovia Center now faces the financially grim prospect of 41 dark nights. Plus preseason, plus playoffs.

There may be peripheral beneficiaries. The 76ers may siphon off some of the patrons, and the Phantoms, who are always good for a good show, should pick up some stragglers.

The owners have put in insulation for a long winter - a war chest of $300 million. The players? Some will head overseas, to join European leagues. Others may try to catch on with start-up leagues here, not an especially appetizing prospect.

Unlike the NBA, or that mother lode of subsidy, the NFL, the NHL is not financially propped up by television. Its ratings are anemic and so its TV revenue is correspondingly scant. It's why the teams have hemorrhaged money, with losses for the last two seasons alone approaching $700 million.

Yet neither side seemed all that eager to arrive at some sort of resolution, in this case a salary cap.

"We're supposed to be partners," lamented the Pittsburgh Penguins' Mario Lemieux, who is both player and owner.

It is a concept that appears to have eluded both sides. Neither could be accused these last few months of good-faith bargaining, or common sense.

"It's a sad day for all of us," said George Gillett, the owner of the Montreal Canadiens.

And so it is.

There are no winners.

They were in this soup a decade ago, when the lockout of 1994 lopped 103 days off the regular season. A 48-game season was pieced together and some salvage was effected.

But neither side seems to have learned from history. Or if they did, they have forgotten it.

The price for such negligence is going to border on ruinous.

[ggutt2003]

IMO-this will be a nasty lockout-The owners feel the players 'won' the last strike in 94 and they will not be duped again.

Being west coast born/raised never really caught on to hockey. But these past few years I have become a fan and have even considered season tix's for the Coyotes. Now what?
As a sports fan in general I have come to accept these work stoppages as a part of the sports world and will continue to wtach/ go to games and am hopeful the season can be salvaged

[vh resurrected]

I hate to think of work stoppages as part of sports. It's ridiculous that some of these guys think they're worth so friggin' much money. A lot of them would be flipping hamburgers if they didn't have their athletic ability. Kids look up to sports figures as heroes. They aren't setting a very good example when they bitch and moan that a couple million isn't enough. Get back on the ice guys, a long lockout will mean even fewer fans left in a sport that can't afford to lose any.

[POD GOD]

Jeez, Todd Bertuzzi picked a good year to get suspended, lol.

[SuckaInA3Piece]

Roenick's tests may lead to retirement

By Tim Panaccio

Inquirer Staff Writer

The next 48 hours could be unnerving for Jeremy Roenick.

And by the time the weekend has passed, the Flyers center should have a good idea whether his 16-year NHL career is over.

Today and tomorrow in Montreal, noted neurologist Karen Johnston will examine Roenick extensively to determine how much damage his brain has suffered from concussions.

Roenick, who says he has had 10 of them since coming into the league in 1988-89, is worried that he might be advised to retire.

"I probably won't know anything until Saturday, maybe later," Roenick said from Phoenix late Wednesday. "I'm bringing some stuff for her and I have a bunch of stuff that has been sent to different people. She's handling everything on her own. She's going to run me through two days of tests."

Johnston is chief of the neurotrauma unit of Montreal General Hospital and on the staff of McGill University's department of neurology and neurosurgery. Among her hockey patients are Eric Lindros, Mike Richter and Scott Stevens.

Lindros sat out the 2000-01 season as a Flyer, partially as a result of Johnston's recommendation that he take at least six months off to recover fully from multiple concussions suffered during the 1999-2000 season. Lindros was traded to the New York Rangers in August 2001.

Stevens, a member of the New Jersey Devils, missed most of last season after Johnston diagnosed post-concussion syndrome. Richter, another concussion victim, retired from the Rangers last fall on her advice.

Johnston wants to examine X-rays, MRIs and reports dating as far back as Feb. 14, when Roenick's left jaw was shattered when struck by a shot from the Rangers' Boris Mironov in New York.

Although he returned to play in late March, Roenick contends that his health has deteriorated since May 15, when, he says, he suffered another concussion after being slammed against the glass by Tampa Bay's Fredrik Modin in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals. Since then, he says, he has suffered various symptoms of a concussion, including persistent, intense headaches.

Flyers general manager Bob Clarke says that Roenick passed his physical at the end of last season, and as that as far as the team is concerned, he is healthy until proof otherwise is provided.

The Flyers do not contest the February concussion in New York. By Roenick's count, however, he later incurred two more concussions. He was struck by a puck in practice last spring by a shot from Mark Recchi, and suffered the Modin hit against the glass in Philadelphia.

So that's three concussions last season, by his count, and the battering likely will render him unable to play this season if the NHL lockout is lifted.

If Roenick is medically determined to be unable to play, he will be entitled to his $7.5 million salary this season. Under the terms of the expired collective-bargaining agreement, all injured players from last season must be paid, even during the lockout.

There are more than a dozen highly paid players - including Ed Belfour, Zdeno Chara, Saku Koivu and Alexander Mogilny - who are undergoing medical rehabilitation from last season and will be tested to see whether they qualify to be paid for this season.

Roenick's primary symptom - persistent headaches - is identical to what bothered Lindros in 2000 after he was hit by Stevens in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. In 1999-2000, Lindros suffered four concussions. It's not unreasonable to assume that Johnston will recommend - at the very least - that Roenick take six months off to recover. She could also tell him to retire.

Regardless of what happens this weekend, visits to the hospital won't be over for Roenick, who has been losing his voice since July. He will undergo surgery to remove a polyp on his vocal cords sometime in the coming month.

"I got a lump in the throat," he acknowledged this week.

Doctors in Phoenix plan to biopsy the polyp. Roenick said they told him it appeared to be benign.

"It's from stress and overuse of my voice," Roenick said, forcing a laugh. Everyone knows Roenick loves to talk.

"I've just got to get through the weekend and see how it all goes," he said.