Photo from United Center’s Seat Finder viewer.
Fans who thought they were in the middle of a nightmare on Saturday awoke to the reality of a lockout by the NHL.
With no negotiations in sight, the league and the NHLPA are seemingly at an impasse. As teams begin sending emails to season ticket holders and canceling preseason events, fans are beginning to make plans to make up for the lack of NHL hockey.
Even after fans began to show their displeasure by unfollowing the official NHL Twitter account in droves once the lockout was announced, the league released a statement addressed to them on Sunday:
Despite the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the National Hockey League has been, and remains, committed to negotiating around the clock to reach a new CBA that is fair to the Players and to the 30 NHL teams.
Thanks to the conditions fostered by seven seasons under the previous CBA, competitive balance has created arguably the most meaningful regular season in pro sports; a different team has won the Stanley Cup every year; fans and sponsors have agreed the game is at its best, and the League has generated remarkable growth and momentum. While our last CBA negotiation resulted in a seismic change in the League’s economic system, and produced corresponding on-ice benefits, our current negotiation is focused on a fairer and more sustainable division of revenues with the Players — as well as other necessary adjustments consistent with the objectives of the economic system we developed jointly with the NHL Players’ Association seven years ago. Those adjustments are attainable through sensible, focused negotiation — not through rhetoric.
This is a time of year for all attention to be focused on the ice, not on a meeting room. The League, the Clubs and the Players all have a stake in resolving our bargaining issues appropriately and getting the puck dropped as soon as possible. We owe it to each other, to the game and, most of all, to the fans.
The phrase “committed to negotiating around the clock” is strange in light of the fact that the league refused to meet with the union hours before the lockout began.
For its part, the NHLPA released a video featuring Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, James Reimer, Gabriel Landeskog and David Backes, who all describe their feelings about the situation.
Whichever side you choose, this lockout has made fans feel, as one fan notes, “like a child in the middle of a divorce.”
