from Barry Rozner of the Chicago Daily-Herald,

I asked an NHL executive last week how many owners we’re talking about here, and he said he thought the number was between six and eight. Let’s call it eight, for the sake of argument.

There are eight men shutting down a $3.3 billion business that has never been in better shape, never been more popular and never meant so much to so many.

This is why Gary Bettman has closed the doors again.

Eight very rich men who had enough money — sometimes hundreds of millions — to purchase a franchise knowing the finances ahead of time. Eight very rich men who had the cash to hand out expensive, long-term contracts, but now don’t like the rules agreed to when they purchased their teams and paid their players.

Eight men in hockey hotbeds like Dallas, Anaheim, Sunrise and Glendale, the last of which is actually owned by Bettman himself. These people don’t like the rules and are willing to lose a season to get their way.

They want more revenue from the players, but that would only temporarily solve the problem and we’ll be right back here again in the same quandary a few years from now.

The real solution is revenue sharing among the owners, which is how the New York Yankees finally pacified the Kansas City Royals.

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