It's tough to argue with that... The players would retort with "We play the game... That's our risk!", and to that extent I agree they do take risk, but who the hell CAN'T live even on the crunched salary? Paris ******* Hilton?
News was talking tonight about the Joint Lemieux/Gretzky (rumored entirely, and denied by Gretzky) attempts to "save the season" (I'm not sure everyone at the old news-office got the memo that the season is done). I think the city here is really missing hockey more than they anticipated. We're not an NBA town, Spring Training doesn't do us a ton of good, and the NFL's over. Pittsburgh's hurting for sports right now short of Pitt basketball and what the kiddies are accomplishing. It's pretty sad really.
Never seen so many Wheeling Nailers commercials in all my life.
EDIT:
BTW, a part of that story I enjoyed was pointing out the NHLers who've bumped out minor league players on various levels. Solidarity my hairy white ass!
It reminds me of a story about my mother... Oddly enough.
My mother, for 18 or 20 (or more, I forget) years of my existance worked for the town's local Steel Worker's Union Hall in town. It's a large hall upstairs and downstairs... The kind rented for weddings, parties, etc.
My mother cleaned was their janitor... Not really contracted or anything, she just did this work under a set list of duties for a set pay... There was no vacation, there was rarely ever any pay increase (she got two raises throughout her years there).
The union workers who were her "boss" were the Trustee Committee members of the union. She always did the job to their satisfaction though, and never once did she get a complaint. If anything she went above and beyond her job, and the only person to ever gripe was the secretary at the hall who was nothing short of a snotty bitch who thought she was better than anyone who actually had to "work", including the Union members.
Well, a couple years ago... I forget how long really, it was just a few maybe ago, the Union Trustees started changing my mother's "duty list" without her knowing. She knew they were doing it though because her job description (usually tacked to her door for the upstairs closet was gone). Little did THEY know she took it and had made copies so her job description was always there, "just in case".
So they come back with all these new duties for her... She asks why the revised list, and she also tells them "you give me that much more work and I'm going to be needing a pay increase". They expected her to do it for free... She was going to be dealing with "routine rentals" now because the Union was going broke... The leaders had spent the coffers dry and they were going to actively push rentals, and they wanted her to do clean-up for free now instead of her set salary. It was going to just be absorbed into her monthly pay's work which she did every night.
She told them no... Actually, my father told them "no" with some explitives and got into a fistfight with a man who's still afraid to go to the local bars here because he thinks my brothers and I go there... So he's suddenly disappeared from any local hangouts, haha. Puss...
Anyway, they fired my mother then... She wouldn't take on what would've ammounted to 200% more of a workload for absolutely no increase in pay (a pittance anyway), so they up and fired her...
What's my point?
Well, I dunno, just a "bad experience" with how Unions tend to treat OTHER people working FOR them... It's no better than the company treats them, sadly.
The irony? I'm far from anti-union, just disappointed to see that the NHLPA is so uncaring about anything but themselves, just like my father's union was (Though I'm not the slightest bit surprised either). It supported my dad when he was sick, but it treated my mother who slaved for them and all their BS, like nothing but the dirt she cleaned. They are, and forever will remain scumbags to me.
Anyway, just a related annecdote there from my point of view anyway.
