from Ken Campbell of The Hockey News,

Whenever this lockout does finally end – and it will someday – perhaps it would be wise for all of us to refrain from succumbing to the temptation to declare winners and losers. Because I truly believe that one of the major reasons why the league has taken such a hard line this time around is it was portrayed as the big winner and it managed to fritter away its advantages in record time.

That has led Gary Bettman & Co., to try to construct an even more idiot-proof CBA this time around, one that is so iron clad that you won’t even be able to get a piece of dental floss through it, forget about a loop. When Bettman spoke to the media after talks blew up (again) in early December, he acknowledged, “Listen, collective bargaining is hard stuff and sometimes it is made even harder depending on the goals and objectives that people have and organizations have.”

Nailed it, Gary. Negotiating a deal as complex as this one is difficult at the best of times, but when the goal of the league is to save its teams from themselves and score a decisive knockout at the same time, should we be surprised that the players and their leader, Don Fehr, display the kind of resolve we’ve been seeing throughout the dispute?

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