Was made official this morning. I'm sure it was anticipated by all hockey fans. I'm sure we'll see a real stampede of players going to Europe to play now. One good thing is that the World Championships this spring should see all the best players from all the countries playing now, so it should be really exciting, versus the usual method of picking players from teams that didn't make the NHL playoff or that were eliminated in the first round.

You can have the whole lot of them,
the club owners too, Good riddance!

Freakin' bulls**t!!!

What makes no sense is that there was more negotiations accomplished in the last 24 hours than the last 24 months. There are rumblings within the players union, they said they would never agree to a cap and then find out that a cap was OK at a certain number. It seems that the owners have the players by the balls at this point knowing they are willing to accept a cap. To go this far and then accept a cap puzzles me, it makes no sense.

The possibly best things about the NHL closing down for the year will be that

1) The minor league teams will gain more press and attention.

2) We'll have more time to listen to the Stones.

OK for me. I am selfish. We have one NHL player on our team from Quebec. He is good and we need him. If they can sort out the NHL dispute in time for the next Stones tour then I am fine. I guess this is the perfect selfish view at it, as I don't hapen to live in NHL land. And to all of you who really miss the games, I am sorry, they just have to sort it out, and I agree they just have to get back on ice soon!

Bjornulf