Another hockey rant

So it all comes down to this. $6.5m dollars per team apart with two hours until the deadline. Pelle Eklund's blog (not the real Eklund, just a Flyers fan with sources), which has been surprisingly accurate, says the NHL needs to up their offer from a $42.5m cap to a $45m cap and the deal is done. Bettman said something incredibly stupid last night, saying that if every team spent to the cap the players would be better off than under the old system... of course, that's neglecting the fact that teams would be paying over $100 million in luxury taxes to get to that amount, and that the high end teams which were driving the average salary up wouldn't just go to a $60m+ payroll team like Detroit (who paid nearly $80m in salaries last year), the Rangers, Philly, Toronto, Colorado, or Jersey. The owners win spectacularily in this... one last give wouldn't change that at all. I'm confident they will get it done, but in case they don't, both sides will lose hundreds of millions and win the reward of being the biggest douchebags in the world...

The NHL starts March 5. Ridiculous, shameful, etc... But it's better than the league imploding further...