from Jesse Spector of The Sporting News,

The NHL knows full well that its main source of leverage is that most players aren't getting paid, and that players skating in Europe and the AHL are doing so, for the most part, on vastly reduced salaries. What could possibly motivate the NHL to call for a two-week break, a proposal that even the tone-deaf league had to know would go over like a stale fart with the public? If you can’t convince the players to let you bleed them dry at the negotiating table, why not do a little bloodletting with the calendar?

It’s a strategy that requires far less effort than formulating new proposals to actually end an utterly useless lockout that has already done enough long-term damage to the NHL to wipe out any gains that would be made by either side with a “win” at the negotiating table. But what else can they do? After all, they’ve tried nothin’ and they’re all out of ideas.

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