from George Johnson of the Calgary Herald,
The question now being: Why, oh why, did this take so long? Where was this degree of urgency in October? November?
Honestly, it leaves you shaking your head.
If one night of serious discussion with the right people involved is what was needed to trigger meaningful dialogue, both sides should be ashamed — or at least, more ashamed — at the lost prestige, the lost revenue, the lost loyalty.
By barring commissioner Gary Bettman and the Donald, the main protagonists in this nasty business, from the room on Tuesday, unencumbered by their grating, condescending George and Martha/Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? routine, the initial bargaining session lasted for over five hours.
And if there is — fingers remain crossed here — headway made that ultimately leads to a resolution in this unseemly impasse and gets the league back on the ice by New Year’s at the latest, what earthly use are either of them going forward?
The two sides met, deliberated among themselves, broke for chow, convened again. Exhausted media, long bereft of fresh angles with which to fill space or airtime, hung out hobo-like in the hotel lobby, trying to avoid eye-contact with increasingly suspicious hotel staff (The sight of Donald Fehr furtively working his cellphone being enough to induce spasms of activity and conjecture).
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