Our View: NHL season looking like it’s lost

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• Hodge: NHL owners can’t afford to miss an entire season
• Waters: 'Who cares' turns to 'we care' as NHL play returns.
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• ‘Our View’ is your view, not my view
• Jobs lost with smart meters
• Time for the NHL to step out of the dark ages

While we’d like to think that somehow, somewhere sanity can prevail and the National Hockey League owners and players can settle on a new contract, reality says otherwise.

At this point, it’s not a stretch to say the 2012-13 regular season is over, that it will be cancelled.

At the very least, those fans still interested should now move on with their lives, and perhaps wait to see here in Kelowna if any players start showing up at the food bank.

While that is unlikely, for those not currently playing in Europe, missing an entire season’s salary is going to hurt.

And for owners, their franchises remaining financially stagnant is not a positive situation, either. Think of the situation involving the Nashville Predators, as the club had to cut a cheque for a $13 million bonus payment to defenceman Shea Weber, as bonuses are not impacted by the current lockout.

The TSN and Sportsnet  hockey pundits are trying to hard to keep hockey fans interested in the progress of the NHL talks, but really they are only trying to justify the importance of their own jobs, because nobody cares. Been there done that, heard it all before.

The last NHL work stoppage was supposed to be the strike to end all strikes. But the general managers and agents found ways to get away the efforts of the last contract deal won by owners to control salary costs.

So commissioner Gary Bettman is back again at the bargaining table trying to do the impossible, find a solution that won’t give an advantage to rich owners over the smaller market franchises. And for that he has become the most hated man in hockey these days.

Ultimately, from the beginning of this lockout, there has been a big pot of money sitting on the table, and the NHL owners and players can’t agree on how to split it up. Sadly, for that it appears we have kissed off an entire NHL season.