This is the end of the NHL as we’ve known it.
Hockey has a million problems. And they begin with the Avalanche.
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Peter Forsberg was paid a salary of $11 million last season.
Joe Sakic was paid a salary of $9.9 million.
Rob Blake was paid a salary of $9.3 million.
No wonder this league cannot afford to stay in business.
Forsberg, Sakic and Blake are all valuable players. But they are not priceless. None of their faces is as instantly recognizable to the American public as Donald Trump’s hair or Paris Hilton’s dog.
Trevor Linden, a center for the Vancouver Canucks and president of the players union, insists it’s the fault of franchise owners that his sport is being forced to turn out the lights at the rink.
Somebody needs to knock some sense into Linden.
Hockey is rich with nothing except self-delusion.
Nobody in the NHL deserves to be paid as much as Forsberg, Sakic and Blake.
Why? Outside of a sold-out arena in Colorado and 10,000 frozen ponds in Minnesota, pro hockey is nothing more than a blip on the radar of American culture.
In fact, if the league never plays another game, will anybody in America from Peoria to Raleigh to Phoenix really care? Probably not.
And the most troubling aspect is, two of those three cities are home to NHL franchises.
RIP, NHL.