Lockout the least of NHL's worries

Enlarge Image

Sidney Crosby's lingering concussion problems became the focal point of a tiring and ongoing debate. (GENE J. PUSKAR / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

When the NHL convenes for its annual award bun-fest in Las Vegas later this week, there will be a familiar staleness to the event, with the same tired jokes, the same B-list celebrities and the same sense of false grandeur.

This year's show also features Nickelback. Insert your own joke here.

The difference, from a Vancouver perspective, is the Canucks won't be represented as they have for the last two seasons. But most everything else will feel and look the same, creating the impression this NHL season was similar to so many others.

And that impression is very, very wrong.

In reviewing the 2011-12 campaign it's difficult to assess the damage done to the game but it was real and it was significant. You can start on the night of June 15, 2011, and the Stanley Cup riot, an event which seemed to release dark and unnatural forces into the firmament.

That was followed by the untimely deaths of Rick Rypien and Wade Belak in the off-season (Derek Boogaard passed away in May).

Then, there was the lingering uncertainty over the health of Sidney Crosby, the game's most recognizable star. Crosby, unwittingly, became the focal point of an ongoing and tiring debate on concussions, an issue which the league still struggles to get in front of along with other matters of player safety.

And this was all before the season even started.

On the ice, the story wasn't much cheerier. The game continued to trend back towards the dead-puck era. Goals were down. Entertainment value was down. True, the first round of the playoffs provided some memorable hockey, as it generally does.

But the post-season also devolved from that point and by the time the final rolled around, few fans outside Los Angeles and New Jersey were engaged in the game's marquee event.

Coming out of the last lockout, the NHL seemed to recapture its lost glory and the three-season stretch from '07-08 to '09-10 produced breath-taking hockey, a new generation of stars and three incredibly worthy Stanley Cup champions in the Red Wings, Penguins and Blackhawks.

This season? Well, we can debate the merits of the newly crowned L.A. Kings, but the fact remains the NHL's best speed-and-skill teams were eliminated long before the Cup final, and that's not a healthy direction for the league.

So where does that leave us? Well, we hate to bring more happy news but the game is headed for its fourth work stoppage since '91, a development that will reopen a number of old sores between the NHLPA and the league as it further alienates a restless fan base.

Given everything that's happened in the last calendar year -- a franchise relocation from Atlanta to Winnipeg, Phoenix hanging on by a fingernail, a half-dozen or so other teams in dire straits -- it's hard to believe the game's stewards would take it on such a ruinous path.

But if there's one thing we've come to count on, it's the greed and stupidity of those stewards. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe there will be games in October. Then again, maybe pigs will fly.

There is, however, one ray of light amid the storm clouds, one thing that creates the hope the game will get better. The '04-05 lockout wasn't exactly a positive for the league but it did give the game's gatekeepers an opportunity to assess their product and make improvements.

The result was a re-interpreted rulebook which liberated hockey's artistry and, for a few years anyway, provided a great show.

Sadly, the forces which created the problem in the first place -- most of which can be found standing behind NHL benches -- were allowed to claw back the reforms and we're right back where we started in the spring of '04.

But if the league did it once, they can do it again. This off-season, there should be some real soul-searching within the NHL. There should be a brutally honest effort to analyze the product and determine where it's going. This summer, there will also be a lot of talk about the business of the game and how its health will be determined by the division of its revenues.

But that's not the problem. Not by a long shot.

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 17, 2012 B16