NHL lockout Hunger Games; fans lamenting high hockey ticket prices (The Vent)

I have been thinking on this for a while now. I finally have some spare time on my holidays to write it down, my thoughts on this "lockout".

My feeling is that we are looking at two fat kids (NHL and NHLPA) fighting over who gets more of the big chocolate cake. And you know who pays for the cake? Us the fans. And what do we get in return? The crumbs and dirty dishes from these greedy S.O.B.s.

The trickledown effect on people who can't afford to be off of work is bad enough in this bad economy, but we have to listen daily about the whining and fighting and the "who started it" fight. Frankly I'm sick of it and I'm sure most people are too.

There have been many ideas tossed around about how to "get everyone back". While a lot are good ideas, I'm sorry they won't work. You know why? Just try and get people to vote. What makes me the angriest about this is the fact that both sides of this problem waited until the last freaking minute to try and figure things out. Why on god's green earth can we not sit down a year in advance to get this deal done? When we know it takes this long, plan ahead and we won't lose any hockey.

Instead we get the goblin-elf child Gary Bettman telling us awkward things at the HOF ceremony. If this was any other business and Gary was the CEO, he would have been long been fired for this uselessness. I mean, three work stoppages and he keeps getting raises? Justify that.

The worst part of this lockout, for me, is the fact that I have to continue to wait for my bet to be cashed in because a friend owes me game tickets. So in the mean time, I will be trying to watch Junior Hockey (WHL) and following it. Just to bring up another fail here, this is for the sports networks. When you have no NHL to show, start playing Junior Hockey! When we had our last lockout, CBC gave us "Saturday Night Movies", how lame was that? I bet ratings looked really good that year. And that year was also when Sid the Kid was still in the QMJHL lighting it up. If they played his games every Saturday, big time ratings and great exposure for the league. Just stupid short sightedness on everyone's part.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go rant about how bad wrestling is these days. God, is nothing good anymore?

I can solve this one real fast.

Hunger Games.

Lock Bettman, Daly, and the Fehr brothers in an arena with various weapons. The fans get to control the game and send fire balls and release live predators that have a blood lust for suits. All participants battle to the death.

The winning person to come out gets final say on the new CBA.

Done.

I found a folder full of my old ticket stubs from Blackhawks games over the years. This stuck out a me:

A game on January 26, 2007 against Nashville (that's the 2006-07 season) in Section 323 Row 9, cost me $10. Since then, tickets in that general area saw rises from $10 a ticket to $15, then to $20 in through the 2008-09 season, then in the 2009-10 season tickets went to $20, $25, and $35, one ticket from the 2010-11 season was $20, last season tickets were $42, and now for the one game I have tickets for this season (that hopefully will be used) cost $57. Those prices were all for 300 Level tickets.

So when NHL owners cry that they're losing money, they can kiss my ass!

I've given a lot of my money to attend games, not to mention drank countless about of beer at $7.75 a beer, and how do you repay me? By taking the sport I enjoy away from me. Thanks a lot a-holes.

I find it funny how NHL.com has taken down the article from their site from May about record revenues for the league. Its not all the owners' fault; the players need to give too, but the bottom line is the players didn't strike, the owners locked the players out. Pretty pathetic on both sides that after meetings in 5 of the last 6 days produced little progress.