from Tom Gulitti of The Record,

No matter how this lockout ends, there will be no winner.

Irreparable damage is being done. What sponsor would commit long-term dollars to a business in which management and labor can’t get along well enough to avoid a lengthy work stoppage every time their CBA expires? Some fans may never come back.

The NHL estimates it has lost more than $650 million in revenue during the lockout and the players have lost nearly 20 percent of their 2012-13 salaries. With games already canceled through Nov. 30, those numbers will go up.

Leadership on both sides deserves blame. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman demonstrated in 1994 and 2004 that he didn’t need Don Fehr running the players’ union to implement a lockout. Somehow the league recovered from those lockouts and had been posting record revenues – $3.3 billion in 2011-12 – before Bettman shut it down again.

And he’s antagonized the players almost every step of the way, uniting them against him and the owners, derailing negotiations and playing into Fehr’s hands.

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