Now where are we?

"Where are you?
And where am I?
We've been slipping slowly south..."--Saves The Day

Indeed.

The on-again, off-again talks between the league and the union are off again. Saturday's talks produced, in a word, nothing. At this juncture, even if they scheduled more talks for early next week, they would not be intended to save this season; stick a fork in 2004-05, folks.

The lines of communication, however, remain relatively open. There has been a lot of progress made in the last few weeks; I think both parties realize that, and hopefully don't want it to go for naught. If they can keep talking before they find themselves galvanized again, there's a chance that we'll see a full sked next season.

There is no concrete deadline for an agreement now, but you'll know it has passed when GB and BG start tossing around the rhetoric-laden barbs again. Language is a fragile thing - William Shakespeare knew it, Emily Dickinson knew it, and these guys know it. They can drone on for fifteen, twenty minutes, and by the time they're done you know they've been talking the whole time, but all you heard was "the other guy is a jerk." Whereas the two aforementioned authors managed to say a lot with a little, Gary and Bob have turned it around completely; they must have teams working on speechwriting, with other teams memorizing thesauri, and are basically just saying "write me a ten-page essay that says nothing."

Personally, as such an employee I think I'd find it hard not to write out the word "blah" as many times as it took to fill those ten pages. In as small a font as I could, so they thought I had actually worked harder. I'd get fired or get a raise, but you have to figure that working for those guys it's a wash either way, because no amount of money would be enough to put up with this kind of ridiculousness. (But I'd be willing to find out what my price was if they offered it to me, I suppose.)

Regardless, despite all their bravado and posturing, it won't be one of these two who Saves The Day <ahem>...Bill Daly and Ted Saskin are the ones whose elbow grease is covering everything that's been done to this point. Also count on outside sources like Wayne Gretzky and former NHLPA head Mike Gartner to do everything they can to help.


And just a brief beef: NBA Commissioner David Stern ripped into the NHLPA on Friday, which certainly didn't help anything. While the league and union are getting ready to conduct last-ditch talks, Stern waltzes in at the second-most inopportune time to tell the players and their executive director that they're all incompetent. Thank you, sir! Rather than tick them off and get them to stand firmer, I'm sure that comment had the desired effect of making all NHLers stare sheepishly at their toes, and Bob Goodenow hang his head and say "Gee whiz...I guess I'm just a big weiner." Gary Bettman used to work for the NBA as a deputy, and he doubtlessly has some ties to Stern, so this just looked like Daddy scolding little Bobby for being such a bully to little Gary...this is just conjecture, but I'm guessing that nobody in the NHLPA appreciated the scolding at all. Please, Mr. Stern, unless you've got something helpful to say, don't say anything at all. Tend to your own CBA, because I've gotta tell you, nobody likes it when those things expire.