Sports Radio Service


		NHL Lockout Might Get Resolved -- Maybe By Michael Duca June 25, 2005

	This past week I spent an entire evening sitting next to Dan Rusanowsky -- we were together for about three and half hours and we talked about baseball at SBC Park. There was not a word of hockey spoken during the evening. Last Friday night Ross McKeon of the Chronicle, who is the beat writer for the Sharks, came into SBC Park to take a turn covering the Giants. Ross came up to me and a couple of other people and said, "well, okay! The only four people who care about hockey in the Bay Area are in this room right now." McKeon knows a whole lot more about this than I do and so I will give him credit for what I'm about to say. I have enough trouble knowing what goes on in rooms that I'm IN, let alone rooms that I'm NOT in. McKeon thinks that they're beginning to pay some attention and the NHL is beginning to understand that if they don't stop fighting over what little bit of bone is left that there's not going to be anything left to bury. I think the hockey lock out might have been another one of the plans for the invasion of Iraq, You know, one of those things where it sure seems like a good idea, to all go kick some butt, yet nobody actually stops to think about what happens afterwards. How are we going to define success? They came very, very close to defining success last year and then scraped the season anyway. Players have given ground on the notion that there can’t be a salary cap in the NHL. People on both sides came off of a number of positions towards the middle and then the commissioner decided it was too late to have the season anyway. So, everybody decided to retreat to their neutral corner and start it all over again. I have no idea of why that was, but after both sides got the opportunity to satisfy their constituencies for awhile, they seem to be talking again. It’s all about political power in any sport. Fortunately, I think they finally figured out even being the biggest frog in a dry pond made no sense at all. I think there will be a TV contract. Hockey has to have a TV contract in Canada or it doesn't exist at all. Rogers and the CBC will both continue to broadcast hockey in Canada. You know, it’s a sad commentary that ESPN is thrilled they're not playing hockey this year because video taped poker games are drawing higher ratings than hockey used to. I sit and wonder what’s going to happen when the ratings for poker start to go down -- will guys actually get up after a tightly contested hand and drop the gloves and go after each other? I don't understand the reality programming gig -- to me, sports is as reality as you need to get. There's an actual contest going on and nobody knows who wins. It hasn't been edited to fit in this time slot and they don't fit cameras underneath the table so you can see the hole cards. You can actually go out there and see the excitement of something develop where nobody knows how it’s going to come out. That's why sports is more entertaining than going to a movie or going to a theater because you go to a movie or you go to the theater, there's a plot and you already know how it ends. Somebody's already told you, If you go to a baseball game, you don't know how its going to end. The same is true of a football game -- you don't know how its going to end. Now with hockey, it sounds like its not going to end in a tie anymore -- it sounds like were going to get a shoot-out.I think that's a positive thing, I have heard there is an American network (I can not recall which network it is) that has an option at least to pick up hockey if it’s played this year. I expect that if hockey is played this year they will pick up that option. The same amount of teams will stay in place in the NHL, There will be a lot of giving on both sides, but one of the things that the ownership is going to have to do in order to get concessions from the players’ side is to guarantee the same number of jobs. The only way you can guarantee that you have the same number of jobs is to guarantee the same number of teams. One or two franchises might be on life support for a couple of years (or they may all move to Washington DC and play with the Nationals), I don't know. The NHL will find places for these teams to play. It’s possible that the NHL may decide the most sensible way to keep this number of teams is to shut down four current franchises and open four franchises in a European division. I don't think the NHL is too far away from that. Those teams can play each other (in smaller arenas that are typical in North America) with some frequency and then travel to the United States and Canada. It is probably that not very many NHL teams would travel to Europe until there are arenas large enough to help defray the travel costs. Areas that host the Winter Olympics, like Turin, Italy, and perhaps even the summer Olympics, like Athens and likely Paris, would have venues large enough. Michael Duca does commentary on various sports and co-hosts Sportstalk on 1430 KVVN San Jose and 1110 KLIB Sacramento.