The NHL lockout is finally, mercifully over. And the agreement couldn’t have come soon enough for the league, given that losing another full season would have inevitably resulted in a sharply reduced fan base along with drastic drops in attendance, merchandise sales, and TV ratings.
Oh, not because of the decreased enthusiasm from fans worn out by the third lockout in a generation. The NHL’s problem would have actually been much simpler than that: If this lockout had dragged on even a few days longer, NHL fans were all going to murder each other. Whether it’s the guy on the next bar stool, your favorite blogger, the coworker one cubicle down, or just some random guy on Twitter, virtually everyone in the hockey world has been completely insufferable for months.
Love this post, but you forgot to mention the party pooper when the lockout ended guy. This guy continues to try a make you feel terrible that you're excited for the return of hockey, because this excitement and love of the game is the reason lockouts happen
ReplyDelete"The Boycotter was always so doomed to such utterly embarrassing and predictable failure that he should have just started wearing a Maple Leafs goaltender mask."
ReplyDeleteJames Reimer is now very sad.
An excellent article. Some of your best work, DGB.
ReplyDeleteFor my own addition, how about those annoying people now infesting the comments section of every hockey-related news story, lockout related or not, who pontificate about how they're completely done with the NHL and don't care anymore (which is, of course, why they're still reading articles about it and commenting on them).
Sort of some pathetic hybrid of The Boycotter and The Checkout Aisle...
WJC?
ReplyDeleteWait... The six still reasonable people in the hockey world were "holed up in an undisclosed location"? How'd they stay so reasonable with the NHL negotiations going on in the same building?
ReplyDelete