:D:DNHL owners cancel season
Failing to save this year, negotiators now face next year
Thursday, February 17, 2005
By Dave Molinari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The National Hockey League's decision yesterday to cancel its entire season was, in the end, as predictable as it was historic.
The league, which has locked out members of the NHL Players' Association since Sept. 15 in an effort to restructure the economics of the game, is the first major-league sports operation in North America to lose an entire season.
Consequently, the Stanley Cup -- one of the most celebrated sports trophies in the world -- will not be awarded for the first time since 1919, when the competition for it was disrupted by a worldwide influenza epidemic.
That is a major blow to a sport whose followers treasure the game's history and traditions. Losing the season figures to have lasting repercussions, regardless of when labor peace is restored.
"The game's going to suffer for a couple of years," said Penguins player-owner Mario Lemieux. "It's going to take time to get back our fans and rebuild the business."
Not until the moment yesterday when he heard NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announce that the 2004-05 season has been canceled because the league and its players could not settle on a collective bargaining agreement.
"I'm terribly disappointed," Recchi said. "I don't understand how it got to this. Well, I do understand, but I always thought there was something there both sides could work to obtain. I still believed to the last minute."
So did Mario Lemieux, Recchi's teammate and the Penguins' primary owner.
"I always thought that, at the end of the day, there would be a deal made," Lemieux said. "As [late] as this morning, I thought the two sides would get together before [Bettman's] press conference and make a deal."
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