THE LOCKOUT IS OVER!

[Sport]

I woke up to the Sportscenter alert on my phone and the first thing I did today was put on one of my Blue Jackets jerseys. I haven't worn a hockey jersey since last year. Feels great.

Now when does the schedule come out?

Time out—didn't you vehemently proclaim you were junking all your team gear and "wasn't going to give sny more of your $ to that team" or something to that effect?

Boy y'all puckheads is something else. Good for y'all that y'all got your game back, though.

Wasn't me. I believe that was SouthernOhiosports freak and he's like 15 or something.

I just haven't been wearing any NHL gear. Jerseys and shirts have been in my closet collecting dust.

And for as mad as I am with the league, boycotting my team and the NHL now that it's back won't do anything except make me miss more hockey. I love the game too much.

[Still MIGHTY]

I just haven't been wearing any NHL gear. Jerseys and shirts have been in my closet collecting dust.

And for as mad as I am with the league, boycotting my team and the NHL now that it's back won't do anything except make me miss more hockey. I love the game too much.

Same and same.

I didn't wear any NHL gear during the lockout. I did not buy NHL merchandise during the lockout. And outside of the World Junior USA games, I did not watch NHL Network (or NBC Sports, I guess.)

And like many have said, any sort of boycott of missing games or not watching them isn't going to hurt the league on an individual basis. Really, the NHL has done enough damage to itself there to the casual fan with this lockout. Further, it's not going to punish the league, but it is going to be punishing yourself. Why would I willingly deprive myself of something I enjoy? Especially when it's not going to amount to anything. There will be plenty of ways to show my displeasure at the game.

I think what I may end up doing is outside of money spent on tickets or parking (which I will probably avoid anyway) is to not spend any more money at the game. No food, no drinks, no merch. At least for this season. I'm going to get myself to the game, but I'm not going to indulge them any further after that.

[Kramerica Industries]

I just haven't been wearing any NHL gear. Jerseys and shirts have been in my closet collecting dust.

And for as mad as I am with the league, boycotting my team and the NHL now that it's back won't do anything except make me miss more hockey. I love the game too much.

Same and same.

I didn't wear any NHL gear during the lockout. I did not buy NHL merchandise during the lockout. And outside of the World Junior USA games, I did not watch NHL Network (or NBC Sports, I guess.)

And like many have said, any sort of boycott of missing games or not watching them isn't going to hurt the league on an individual basis. Really, the NHL has done enough damage to itself there to the casual fan with this lockout. Further, it's not going to punish the league, but it is going to be punishing yourself. Why would I willingly deprive myself of something I enjoy? Especially when it's not going to amount to anything. There will be plenty of ways to show my displeasure at the game.

I think what I may end up doing is outside of money spent on tickets or parking (which I will probably avoid anyway) is to not spend any more money at the game. No food, no drinks, no merch. At least for this season. I'm going to get myself to the game, but I'm not going to indulge them any further after that.

This is really the main point in all of this. The lockout(s) haven't helped, obviously, but hockey just isn't a casual fan sport. All breaks in the action, aside from severe injury and glass broken ones, are short (including commercials - only 1:30 in length), the action is continuous, and only people who actually know the sport are aware of what is going on at all times, the nuances, schematics, etc.

CCSLC is not the best place to gauge the average hockey fan. Besides being a website headed by a Canadian, all of us who are hockey fans here are the total puckhead versions, the ones who watch hundreds of games per season. Lockouts piss us off. They do nothing to make us stop watching altogether when the league finally comes back. We're all too (hopelessly) committed by this point.

[PacificCoastRL]

I'm not changing anything. I'm happy the lockout is over. I wasn't happy with the way the players were treated, but that's life. And when you think about it, that's all that happened - life got in the way of the hockey season.

[Kevin W.]

http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/2013/01/07/winners-losers-of-the-nhl-lockout/

Thoughts?

[The_Admiral]

I said it already: the owners brought in Bob Batterman and Proskauer Rose to achieve nothing less than complete annihilation of organized labor. That was the goal. They didn't get it. Ergo, they lost. The union knew they would be made to take a haircut on HRR and brought in Donald Fehr to mitigate their certain losses. He did mitigate their losses. Ergo, they won.

You can say "well if you crunch the numbers here, doot doot doo, the owners got this much and this thing and that thing," well, yes, they did, but they negotiated for months by saying "this is our offer, take or leave it, seriously we'll run out of the room and cry," they said they wouldn't sign a deal with the union's legal representation in the room, and they said five-year contracts were the hill they would die on. They negotiated in the give-or-take manner that negotiations are traditionally conducted, they did it with Fehr in the room, and the five-year contract hill went undied upon. Lost, lost, lost.