Lockout Imminent?

Russo also mentioned:

While I am not an NHL executive, GM Chuck Fletcher certainly is, along with the entire Wild management, and they made an effort in building Koivu's contract in order to withstand any CBA complications that may arise.

Following Koivu's eye-opening contract, I stumbled upon this blog entry by The Denver Post (http://bit.ly/dnTFT3). It talks about the fragile state of the NHL, and how a lockout is not just history. Here are a few excerpts:

The article really paints a picture of the current status of the league and how even after years of raising the cap ceiling, the league is still in a very vulnerable state. A combination of Koivu's contract and that article got me shaking. No, I am not being paid an NHL salary but I don't think I can stand hockey withdrawal for a whole year. Seven months between missing the playoffs and season opener is bad enough. Now, to make my day worse, I read the Kovalchuk re-signing. Red flags appeared everywhere in my head...

And what happens afterwards? If teams manage to lockup numerous key players for ridiculous long-termed contracts, what happens to the teams that DID heed Gary Bettman's discouragement for long-term deals? How will the new CBA cope with these deals that are signed for 15-20 years? If these type of deals occur in numbers, the league will have a tough time trying to deal with them as waiting for them to expire is just not an option since fans do not have the patience to wait that long.

It just seems that these recent occurrences is a ticking time bomb.

As a Wild fan, I have a lot of faith in GM Chuck Fletcher, but seeing him try to build a contract that is made on the expectation that a lockout will occur is not a comforting thought. That, along with the recent signing of Kovalchuk has me thinking that there is great division between the league, team executives and the NHLPA. With so much going on and the league still recovering from the 2004-05 lockout, I can only guess that the next CBA negotiations will take longer than an off-season to discuss.

Ironically, negotiations occur in the year 2012, and we all know what that means: the apocalypse...