keep yer stick on the ice: talk players league

  since 1890
when
  america's 
leading ball-players 
           stoutly  walked
                out 
             on the old national league 

and 
set up their own outfits
 
  " with all the stars in .....
                    and all the owners out  "

 
the up and down battles 
               between
                  "the players
                            and   their  owners"
                    have probed 
                       a very  deep 
                            hot and 
                                     sore  spot
  
                                   inside the massive soul 
               of  america's 
                    
                       " day labor "                                
---------------------------------------------------------
this shift


 its
"the skate and fight"
               guys  turn 
to  have 
  " a go at their masters"
                        


==================================

"Three billion dollars. 
This was the offer put on the
table by a coterie 
of Boston based businessmen 
to buy
the entire National Hockey League
 puck, stick, and
barrel." 


" the great humiliation
 was not so much the offer.

It's the fact 
that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman
 felt
like he had to take it seriously." 

  "As professor Andrew Zimbalist sez
 "What the  offer 
shows  
is that there are people
with  financial 
                 resources 
              out there 
that see much more potential
 and value in
hockey 
if the league is run properly" 


To make matters worse
 Bettman delivered 
   a speech
announcing his plan
 for restarting play this fall

Making peace with the crisis 
of overproduction 
that is
the National Hockey League" 

Bettman announced that
every one of the NHL’s thirty teams 
would return.

Bettman in his next
breath 
 publicly threatened
  permanent player replacements
                    this fall."


" Using scab players
 would in fact
violate Canadian labor law,
 where unionists are
protected against job loss 
while on strike or locked
out. "


 Al Strachan of the Toronto Sun wrote 
 "It’s a desperate step,
 a
virtual legal minefield,
 but [Bettman] has no choice
now.
 He promised too many owners
 a hard cap [mandatory
spending limits on players 
to make up for budget
problems 
rooted in over-expansion]
 and he is backed
into a corner. 
If the owners think replacement players
will restore credibility
 to their sport, 
they have been
misled. It will only make 
the NHL more of a travesty
than it is already."

Meanwhile, the players 
-- after seeming to wither
toward the end of negotiations 
-- are straightening
their backs and holding firm.

 They have offered to cut
their pay,
 but they refuse to have 
the owners crisis of
overproduction 
solved on their backs.

 As Islanders
representative Mark Parrish said, 
"The union has bent,
but right now we are stronger 
and more united than
ever."

" Hockey, because of its comical Sun Belt
expansion, 
is finding its skilled players marginalized
by a glut 
of grabbing, pawing, clunking defensemen."


-----------------------

this giff then wanders off
in  boo hoo style
toward
the glory days 
of bobby hull and davey keon 
                       blah blah


but 
 as far as the product
 on the ice goes....

hey no way round it

the talent
        was gettin mighty 
                        sparse

 like mother hubbards soup
           not enough  real meat  
                to fill all  30 bowls 


sure  
scab hockey holds no solution

but it does open stuff up .....


as in 

"we'll build our own league "

   10 teams 
      in ten top cities 

who's to say which is 
the biggger  bluff

fuck 

compared to 30 team
 scab league .....

--------------------------------------------