The NHL Lockout Stinks

Hockey fans everywhere were recently given a unified voice in the form of dying words from lifelong hockey fan Archie Bennitz when the elderly man used his obituary as his platform to provide the planet Earth with the best known description of the NHL Players' Association Director Bob Goodenow and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman: "They're skunks," Bennitz said.

At the start of the lockout, which has now lasted over 130 days, I was in the camp that the game needed to be fixed and that if it took the whole season to fix it, then so be it. I, along with all true hockey fans, had to find other ways to get my hockey fix. I watched my younger brothers' hockey games (on the off chance that they inexplicably start reading me, they both are great hockey players as they had a chance to learn from their great older brother), I watched college hockey, and I even watched replays of old games on TV. Still, it wasn't enough.

As a huge sports fan, I tried to take in more of other sports to help fill the void. I watched plenty of football and even more college basketball. I knew it was going to be tough, especially after football was over, but I knew I had to endure one year without the NHL for the game to be healed. As hard as it was, I had made my peace with that.

I still followed the NHL labor talks in passing, expecting to see little or no developments at first and thought they would start to compromise more around the midseason point. I rolled my eyes when I saw Chris Chelios try to bobsled, I sighed when I read the hardships that employees of teams and of the league had to go through, and I cringed when I heard how many people were laid off.

It was when I read the recent remarks of the NHLPA President Trevor Linden that I was left dumbfounded and wondering what was happening to the league. Linden told the players to be prepared for the lockout to stretch deep into next season.

It was when I read the obituary of Archie Bennitz that really made me think of the game and what Bob Goodenow and Gary Bettman are doing to it (I understand that they are puppets, but if they truly loved the game, they could rise above their positions to save it). Are the players and owners that incapable of compromise? Their collective arrogance and incompetence is nothing short of absurdly astounding.

Can they really be unaware that Chris Moneymaker is now a bigger celebrity than Chris Pronger? Can they not understand that NASCAR, of all sports (I use this term very loosely, because NASCAR, while it may be entertaining to their fans, is simply not a sport), has lapped the NHL in popularity? Why can't they understand that the casual fan simply does not need the NHL, but that the NHL needs the casual fan?

I have learned a lesson from Archie Bennitz. You never know how much time you have in life, you can't know when your number will be called and you really have to live every day as if it was your last. If I was, God forbid, to pass away tomorrow, I would take to the grave my true feelings of Bob Goodenow and Gary Bettman and the lockout.

In honor of Archie, I'm no longer going to sit idly by while hockey fans lose their passion and while people are really hurt by the lockout. I'm no longer going to give Goodenow and Bettman the benefit of the doubt during the labor talks. I refuse to continue to rationalize their ineptitude.

Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow have been disgracing the game of hockey for too long. Hockey is the biggest joke to the majority of sports fans in the country and those that truly love it can't even watch it being played at its highest level. The fact that they cannot even begin to compromise and put aside their differences to do what is best for the game makes me sick to my very core.

It would be different if they were giving it everything they had to fix the game, but they aren't even talking anymore. This has turned into what's best for Gary Bettman and the owners and what's best for Bob Goodenow and the players instead of what's best for hockey. The fact of the matter is if they loved the game even half as much as many of its fans, I could watch an NHL game tonight. Their greed is utterly ridiculous and the fact that they aren't even trying to fix the game anymore is unfathomable.

The next time someone asks you what you think of the lockout or the NHL, rather than explaining the lockout or rationalizing the stances of the two sides, just give the standard "Goodenow and Bettman are skunks." Archie would've wanted it that way.

Mark Chalifoux is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Tuesday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Mark at [email protected].