On this one-week anniversary of the NHL lockout I thought I would start up a series of posts chronicling my inevitably dwindling hope for an NHL season this year.
This was a week that saw not only the lockout take effect but also the official cancellation of the preseason. As I have mentioned before NHL.com has taken down all current player-related content and all jerseys being sold from the NHL Shop are now blank. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
But okay, the preseason was canceled. This doesn’t really affect me in the immediate future. It wasn’t scheduled to start for another couple of weeks and let’s be honest- I wasn’t buying a new Blackhawks jersey any time soon (do you KNOW how expensive they are?). So in the end my hope meter is still at about a 6 out of 10. Rounded up.
However my optimism (if you wanna call it that) isn’t very widely spread. Dare I acknowledge the fact that the NHL is the most fragile of the four major sports and this is a storm I’m not sure it’s going to survive. I may be comparable to Tom Hanks before this series is over. That is, I will be alone on the deserted NHL Island and Lord knows I don’t have enough common sense to build myself a raft. I’d be SOL. Metaphorically speaking of course.
If this keeps up though, the NHL is going to be SOL in the literal sense. There won’t be any revenue left to fight over because there won’t be fans bringing in revenue. See how that works, guys?
Still, I haven’t lost hope. The players want to play and the owners want money. It comes down to that. Surely they can’t be stupid enough to wipe out another entire season for the second time in less than a decade, right? Right??
