Warner’s Ultimate NHL Hockey Dream

Perceptions by Gerry Warner

“I have a dream.”

With apologies to Dr. Martin Luther King, who uttered this statement in the most famous speech delivered in the 20^th Century, I too have a dream, but my dream has to do with a much more modest goal than liberating an entire race of people.

I just want to feel good about hockey again.

Now that the NHL lockout is over, doesn’t it warm the cockles of your heart to know that the team owners obtained their goal of retaining half of the league’s $2.27 billion in annual revenues? And those ever-suffering players can go back to earning as much as $100,000-a-game (you read that right) not to mention their gold-plated, defined pension plan that no ordinary schmuck has a chance of earning and the half-dozen rich teams will keep getting richer while the 18 teams that lost money last season will continue to lose.

And they have the gall to say this is the deal that will “save hockey,” or at least hockey NHL style. Well I’ve got news for the greedy NHL owners and players. You can count your millions and billions for as long as you like, but this deal is no more sustainable than the last one. And it’s only a matter of time until the league that’s lost 2,365 games to strikes and lockouts over the last 20 years (more than the NFL, NBA and both major baseball leagues combined) exhausts its ever-forgiving fans and collapses of its own accord. And what will Bettman and Fehr do then? Count their millions? But it won’t be coming from the league they destroyed. However, don’t despair! There’s hope. And with apologies to Jonathon Swift, allow me to make a modest proposal to save professional hockey.

First step, abolish the NHL.

I’m not kidding. This corrupt organization of millionaires and billionaires has dissed the fans one too many times. And in its place there should be a new league making use of something hockey has got that football, baseball and basketball sadly lack  – international popularity.

In Canada, hockey is virtually a religion with the Stanley Cup its Holy Grail. No argument there. But hockey is also very popular in some – and I emphasize – “some” parts of the US, but not the South like idiot Bettman thinks. Hockey is also wildly popular in several European countries – Sweden, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia and the like. And then there’s Russia, Canada’s greatest hockey rival and the only other country as passionate about hockey as Canada. (Hell, both Harper and Putin are tremendous fans.)

And that’s the formula all you disillusioned fans out there. Reconfigure hockey on an international basis and to hell with the NHL. Do I need to remind you of how popular the World Jr. Championship is every Christmas ? More popular than Santa Claus even when Canada doesn’t win a medal. So using soccer – the most popular game on earth – as a template, let’s remake hockey in a similar international style.

There would be three leagues – the Canadian, American and European including Russia of course. Canada could easily support 10 or a dozen teams with additional franchises in Quebec City, Halifax, Hamilton and maybe even a Saskatchewan team playing in Saskatoon or Regina or both. The US could also easily support 10 or so teams, throwing out all the teams of Bettman’s “southern strategy” with the exception of maybe Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area and adding Portland and Seattle. (maybe  a New England team too)

As for Europe, you just watch them. With the caliber of hockey played in Sweden, Russia and the Czechoslovakian states, it could very easily be the strongest league of all. And look what you would have? Hockey played in places where people love the game, support it and where there’s snow on the ground half the year. You would have national, international and ethnic rivalries just like the great rivalries in soccer. You could have league championships with shorter seasons followed by a World Hockey Championship every year played in sold-out arenas in every league with world-wide TV coverage. How could it lose? ow couldHow   

Yes, maybe the current players and owners wouldn’t make quite as much money in a set up like this. Cry me a river. But it would be Great Hockey and who’s going to argue with that? Impossible, you say. Yeah, right. And how many of you a month ago would have said the Kootenay Ice would be riding a six-game winning strike now?

Remember the old saying, “build it and they will come.” Let’s build it.

 Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and international hockey nut. His opinions, as bizarre as they may seem, are his own.