NHL Owners and NHLPA Report Their Progress

Bill Daly had this to say regarding the impact of the lockout.

"“That is not going to be recouped and that’s going to cost both sides,” Daly told reporters in New York. “That’s unfortunate but it’s a reality of where we are.”"

Donald Fehr, head of the Players Association, responded as you would expect.

"“If this is a loss, this is a loss that is entirely of their own making,” Fehr told The Canadian Press in an interview. “They’re the ones that did this, nobody told them to.”"

The truth is both sides have lost. The NHL lost respect, revenue the needs to continue to function. The players have lost money. They lost time in their playing career, and that cannot be replaced.

A NHL player has a definitive length of a career, when their hand eye coordination is at its peak, your legs can recover from 20 minutes a game of play, and your body can absorb the jarring hits a game delivers. Even just the schedule of practice, travel to city, sleep in a new bed, practice, then game at night repeated over a five month schedule. The family back home is missing you, you are trying to play at the high level needed, and you start to notice the affects of age.

You think back to when you were playing major juniors or college, knowing it was a matter of time until some NHL General Manager gave you a chance and selected you in the NHL draft.

You cannot get back seconds of time, and here you have the arrogance of the owners canceling the preseason due to their inability to stop offering decade long 100 million dollar contracts that will cripple their team and sink the league.

The league will play hockey someday. Just with new faces and familiar ones with diminished skills.