R.I.P. NHL

Fair warning:  This will not be be an eloquent, thought-provoking, literary masterpiece.  This is a full blown (OK maybe a little scaled-back) rant from a die-hard Detroit Red Wings fan and one angry, irritated, annoyed, jaded, nauseous, infuriated, and ticked off fan of the NHL.  Cigarettes have their warning labels...this is mine.  Whether you heed to it is up to you.

After the NHL and the NHLPA (the two most inept groups of people not only in professional sports, but in all of business in the free world) met today and AGAIN reported "no progress," I think it is safe to say the 2012 season is on life support.  I'm just going to assume that Gary Bettman and his band of minions will continue to play hard ball in this lockout until they drop the hammer and cancel the entire season...AGAIN.  With that said, let me be the first to declare the NHL dead...that's right...D-E-A-D dead.  May you forever rest in piece.  Think I am being too presumptuous?  Well, then take a look at today's comments from Bettman's Tweedledum to his Tweedledee (NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly):

"Unless they (NHLPA) show some willingness to compromise, I don't know how we get this done."

Ahem, I believe it is your group, dear sir, that seems unwilling to compromise which is hilarious since your league brought in around $3 billion in revenue last year.

Add the fact that Daly said no other meetings are scheduled but they would "stay in touch," and I have now completely given up on the fallacy that the NHL gives a damn about the fans.  I am now convinced they are truly stubborn, arrogant, and short-sighted enough to put a bullet in the upcoming season. 

"Stay in touch?!"  This isn't a breakup of a junior high spin-the-bottle-spawned fling!  We're talking about the future of what we are led to believe is a major professional sports league worth billions of dollars!  We're talking about the real possibility of the cancellation of an entire season for the second time in less than a decade!! 

But have no fear, the Commissioner Bettman says the fans will come back because hockey has the "greatest fans in the world."  Give me a break.  If we're so great then why do you treat us like Naomi Campbell treats her assistants?  Answer that ol' wise one.

Mr. Bettman, if you cancel this entire season, or a big chunk of it, you can kiss any casual fan you worked to get goodbye.  You can probably also count on some of the biggest fans flipping you and your Mickey Mouse league the bird.  In words that you and your owners can understand, that means less money.  Isn't that all you really care about anyway?  You are running this league into the ground and you deserve all of the consequences that come from this recent muscle-flexing contest you have provoked.  Rest assured if this continues there will be plenty.

As a life-long fan, I will say that if the entire season is lost I almost hope that NONE of the fans come back when the league resumes and it goes the way of the Dodo bird.  Subsequently, I hope that King Bettman, in search of a job, goes crawling back to his pal David Stern (NBA Commish) in search of employment and Stern either kicks him to the curb or laughs and gives him a job as a towel boy for the Charlotte Bobcats.  Then this man can feel what it's like to be shunned by those you trust.  Maybe then he will have some sympathy for us fans that have been forced to swallow down the crap and the rhetoric he has continued to feed us in his 20-year tenure of "excellence."

Maybe I am just a little too heated at the moment.  Maybe it is still early and the season will be salvaged.  I probably am jumping to conclusions a little too early.  Fine.  But I will not waiver in my opinion that if the entire 2012 season is lost than the NHL is dead.  They barely survived the last time and were just starting to recover.  This would be a death blow.  We'll see what happens, but right now I am not confident that the greed and the incompetence of the men who's hands hold the fate of the season will allow them to do what is right. 

Congratulations, NHL, you are now on the brink of becoming soccer in the United States.