Again.....am talking English League specifically, not a competition that includes winners from various leagues. See the difference there?

??

Thats like saying Sunday league football is better than EPL / SPL

But Sunday league is better than the SPL
Well at least I wont be clearing them coming into Canada this season if it remains locked out.

For punch ups, leg breaking tackles and half time oranges it is.

Once again thank you, at least I will understand a little about what my customers will yabba on about in the coming weeks

Not that I really care, but my limited understanding is that last time around the players and owners agreed that they were a partnership of sorts, each mutually reliant on the other. They agreed that the salary cap would by x% of revenue. Since then hockey has done OK and the revenue has gone up. The owners now want to reduce that percentage.

There is more money for salaries, but a lower percentage of the revenue.

As others point out, its greed on both sides, and its the little guys, concession holders, sports bar owners etc etc that are going to be the real losers.

To make the conversations more meaningful, it goes beyond the issue of just wages.

Hockey is a regional sport in North America. The region is the habitable part of Canada and the northern part of the USA. The original six teams in the league were Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Detroit and Chicago. All places where it gets cold in winter.

Back at the end of the 20th Century the NHL decided to try and make hockey a North America wide sport and we ended up with teams in such places as Arizona, Tennessee and Florida. These are places with no tradition of playing hockey and they have struggled to fill their stadiums and to survive financially.

The NHL faces two choices:
1) Allow the loss making teams to move to more traditional hockey markets as the Winnipeg Jets moved from Atlanta last year.
2) Reduce the payroll to such an extent that the southern teams with half full stadiums can still make a profit.

Whether or not the NHL is a truly national league in the USA is the real issue rather than just greedy billionaires arguing with greedy millionaires.

No. You suggested that the Canadian iced hockey teams are governed from abroad. In fact they have individually the same voting power in NHL decisions as US based franchises. Canada did not join a foreign league to use your own phrase.

UK football (and all other leagues in other European countries) are subject to EUFA and FIFA rules. Both based abroad. Unless you're Swiss.

But it flippin is....ever played at the Hackney Mashes?

better than the SPL for sure

Bettman's a cock and a crook and the players' union is totally right to take action here. It's irrelevant how much the players earn, the proposed collective bargaining agreement is grossly one-sided. This is all relative. If your employer turned to you tomorrow and said they were going to take a collective bigger share of your earnings for the next few years, and you had a union that represented you, you can bet that you'd be on strike too.

The Canadian Govt are also doing it with their workers except they are not taking any profits from the workers they are just saying we are going to do this and you can tell your union that we wont bargain in good faith and if you threaten to strike you will be legislated back to work.
Oh and BTW here are 19000 plus layoff notices to your workers however no member of Parliament will be receiving one and we are not sure how to deal with MPs pensions you know the ones where they contribute one dollar and the taxpayers put in 24 dollars to it and they can retire on full pension after 6years service at the age of 55.
Do I feel sorry for the NHL players or owners do I ****.

Quite a few of them are indeed sodding off. They are going to play for teams in Europe. Spezza is the latest. He's going to Switzerland. Others seem to be heading to (or back to) Russia.

Just curious but you do realize it's ice hockey, right? are you trying to make some kind of point? if not, you just look stupid kinda like someone having a conversation with Brits over football and continually calling it soccer.

On the subject, at least junior hockey will thrive and it's a better game to watch anyway.

+1 never did like Bettman, he just looks and sounds like a weasel and I would never trust anything he says.

+1 the rich complaining about the rich. Does anyone care? I don't.

Iced hockey as in iced coffee, curious Canadiana.