Take that, Gary Bettman!

As for the lockout, I mostly sympathize with the players -- since they're the ones I'm going to see and they're the ones getting concussed for the sake of my entertainment. My first favorite excerpt from a media story (the NYT):

Ryan Miller, the Buffalo Sabres goaltender, took a dim view of Bettman’s stewardship.

“Gary has basically run this business for 20 years, so if he’s operated at a loss for how many of those years, how is he still in a position of leadership, or even have a job?” Miller said, and then answered his own question. “Gary’s doing exactly what the owners all want, and Gary’s doing a great job in their minds.”

My second favorite excerpt from a media story (again, the NYT):

The 2004-5 lockout cost the N.H.L. all 1,230 regular-season games and the Stanley Cup playoffs. The first lockout of the Bettman era, in 1994-95, cost 468 games, almost half the regular season.

That total since Bettman took the job in 1993, 1,698 regular-season games, exceeds the totals over the same period in Major League Baseball (948 games in addition to the postseason in the 1994 players’ strike); in the N.B.A. (704 games in owners’ lockouts last season and in 1998-99); and in the N.F.L. (no regular-season games lost).

All kidding aside, both players and owners, however, should be concerned about the ridiculously high ticket prices for games. It shouldn't cost more than $30 to sit in the upper deck for a regular season game and spending $80 or $90 to sit in decent seats is beyond stupid.

Must be hockey night...

Beer + 1 can of dog food means my team must be playing. I'm curious about the hefs from Sierra Nevada. The Summer Twilights from Deschutes Brewery in Bend are sublime and seasonal -- I got the last six-pack at my local grocery. My girlfriend said I should horde them for myself, but I thought the hockey Gods would look more favorably on my team if I shared them with my teammates.

Quick background: as co-captain of my team I quietly obsess each week over the kind of beer to bring to my games. It's one thing to disappoint my teammates with my poor and inexcusably bad play. It's quite another to let them down cooler-wise. 

--S.H.