Wednesday, February 16, 2005

NHL cancels season. Dozens yawn in protest.

So they've decided not to play professional hockey this year. What I want to know is: when did anyone realize that hockey games weren’t being played? If it hadn’t been for the stories about the lack of progress in the labor negotiations, I doubt I would have noticed prior to May or so (and even then, I wouldn’t have cared).

And I’m a little tired of the claim that this is the first time that a professional sports league has lost an entire season to a labor dispute. We don’t know whether that accurately describes this situation, because it presupposes that there will be subsequent seasons: if there aren’t any, then this is just another professional sports league that folded, and the sports record books are full of such leagues. (The WUSA, the XFL, and the NASL, to name but three.)

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