Let's be honest: the only thing the players took from the last lock-out was earlier free agency, now coming as early as 24 years old for many who make the NHL upon their first tryout. The rest was a bulldozing effort won by the owners, including a salary cap that would even the odds and create parity, a 24% roll-back of players' salaries, and a form of revenue-sharing amongst owners to help teams who are struggling financially.
This time around, when the league is making $3.3 billion dollars a year in shared revenue (triple that of 2004), the Cup not having been won by the same team twice in a row 15 years, and the cap at over $70M this summer, it's the owners' fault for consenting to mind-boggling contracts - and I'm not thinking of Shea Weber per se (although matching the offer was silly), and while Zach Parise and Ryan Suter will be a bit over-paid for the next decade, I was thinking more of #4 defenseman Matt Carle netting $8M per season with the Tampa Bay Lightning as a particularly ludicrous deal. Imagine that - under the cap, the team cannot afford to have 9 players of his caliber but have a minimum of 20 jerseys to fill, although 23 would be ideal. That's a lot of wasted cap space on a second liner...
In any event, the former Vancouver Canucks' captain Trevor Linden has stayed out of the debate. And wisely so. I got this signed insert in a pack of Pinnacle Brands' 1997-98 Be A Player cards, and it's #9 in the set (the regular card, anyway, they don't differentiate between the regular and signed version in the numbering); it's autographed in thin black sharpie near the bottom of the card.
I'd forgotten about this card, actually, and just came across it recently now that I'm re-classifying my ''special'' cards in binders, by player - rather than in boxes, by year.
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