So long, NHL

I was staring through the five-hole and thought I caught a glimpse of hope, but the pads slammed shut before I could even think of getting a shot off.
Oh, there'll be another meeting between elements of the NHL and the NHLPA, likely Monday, but that'll likely be it. The season will be officially cancelled. Many Canadians will shrug their shoulders: we're used to no hockey by now. Many Americans won't notice at all.
With this season cancelled, there's no reason to negotiate until mid-August. And when that negotiation session fails, they'll hold off until December. And, quite possibly, next season will be gone as well.
And I for one say good riddance.
Last time I wrote on this topic, I blamed the owners almost exclusively. Not much has changed in the interim, although I do wonder why a quarter to a third of the players seem to have no problem playing for a fraction of their NHL salaries.
Pierre Maguire suggested last night that close to seventy percent of players would accept a salary cap, a contention Tie Domi took serious exception to. While I expect there are a few players out there who actually think they're hurting at this point, I'd suggest the vast majority are still in it for the long haul.Trouble is, what do they think they're going to get out of it all?
Gary Bettman isn't going to bend. He is already responsible for the institution of a cap in basketball and he has hardass owners backing him up. Peter Karmanos, in Carolina, is one of these hardasses. He's the one who claims he's losing less money without a season than he would with one. If being the owner of an NHL franchise drains your pockets that fast, I gotta wonder where your business sense is, Peter.
Could it be that Bettman and Company lured you into team ownership? Could they have filled your head with visions of "cost certainty"? Might they have said something like "short-term pain equals long-term gain?"
Don't worry, Peter, you aren't alone. There are other owners, in such hockey-mad cities as Tampa, Miami, Nashville, Anaheim and Columbus who got sucked in right along with you. Meanwhile, your franchisor has allowed your product to deteriorate to the point where people in many American markets would rather watch poker and tractor pulls.
The longer this goes, the less reason players have to accept any system that links their salaries to league revenues. That's because the longer this goes, the lower those revenues will be if the league ever does start up again. Look what happened to baseball. It's only just starting to show signs of recovery a decade after its labour strife.
For the same reason, the longer this goes, the stronger must be the owners' resolve on a hard cap. With lower revenues, teams will have less money to pay their players.
I'm amazed that both sides don't seem to understand the value of a quick settlement. The players offered an enormous pay cut that should have been at least the basis for an ongoing discussion. The league retorted with a proposal for an even bigger pay cut...AND a salary cap. I really can't blame the players for feeling insulted.
I respect Trevor Linden enormously for at least trying to bridge the gap. But it's just too wide. I'm predicting dissolution of the NHL. It may be reincarnated as a smaller league with lower salaries (and hopefully some rule changes) but the NHL as we knew it is no more.