hockey players as being better known today than they’ve ever been. 

Maybe he's not as out there as he comes off. The owners have known for some time that they need to slash salaries almost in half. If they don't build up the stars or the sport, the lack of drawing power gives the players even less leverage for bargaining. Talk the talk without backing it up with the millions needed to promote the product properly, and you avoid those nasty anti-trust lawywers.

Of course, the union is winning no prizes in the reality derby either.

Suffer Ye, Rich Player

As much as the PA’s Mr. Goodenow whines about the poor third tier players and how salary caps will hurt them, it is the superstars, their agents, and hangers-on who are looking at three to six million dollar rollbacks.   By contrast, one six million dollar salary pays a lot of third and fourth tier players.

The hockey have-nots seem to be able to live with a salary cap. After all, it’s a brass ring that still pays millions more than they’re seeing.

Goodenow says there's no split amongst the rank-and-file, so you know that there is a split amongst the rank-and-file.  The NHL owners know it, and are fully prepared to wait.  Mix generously with some disinformation from both sides, and you have a major league mess.

The Dilution Myth

The football-centric major media lemmings love the chestnut about the NHL expansion causing too much dilution. This is a common theory of the Eastern media to explain how teams in baseball and hockey buy so many lousy players for such big ticket numbers. The notion that agents representing guys who have more place in a blood-bank line than a major league lineup of course isn't popular, because the agents and managers have sway over interviews of their clients.

Dilution is a myth, pure and simple, especially when it comes to hockey. Hockey was the first “domestic” sport with a global talent pool.

Hockey has expanded and sustained itself over the last decade in markets great and small. It has followings in places as removed from snow and ice as San Antonio to traditional bastions like Quebec.

The NHL has done a terrible job of promoting its best and brightest to the levels seen in other sports. Basketball and baseball can sell Asian import players as cool and hip additions to the talent pool, but selling Serbs to suburbia seems to be more of a challenge.

Meanwhile the action on the ice continues to improve at all levels of the game with the conditioning of the athletes and improvements in equipment and rules. The AHL, ECHL, and CHL have all seen marked improvements in the overall quality of the game.