[The Darkest Canuck]

Jagr probably doesn't, but maybe next year an Iginla, or St. Louis, or Heatley, or Alfredson, or whoever will have an incredible season and WILL deserve to get paid that much, because their efforts had such a direct effect on the team's success. Cferneyh's said before that winning hockey teams put fans in the seats, the fans in the seats buy things at the games, and own merchandise, and watch the games on tv, and so on and so forth... winning hockey teams are made up of players who give it 110% and go in there every game and fight as hard as they can for those 2 points, putting their bodies on the line, and pushing themselves to the limit. if one player can stand out amongst the team as a whole for having an direct effect on the team's success, then yeah, he should get a higher salary than what other players have...if you're bringing home any awards, or accepting any kind of hardware from the league, if any new banners go up in your arena, if you can turn a team that missed the playoffs a year ago into a playoff team, or a non-contender into a contender, you should probably get a raise. now, say a player has an incredible season, his best ever, he leads the charge all season to help his team remain in contention for, and secure a playoff spot, and then take the team deep into the playoffs...the team's profits go waaaaaaaaay up, from a higher attendance level, more playoff games, more people consuming food and drink, more people buying 50/50 tickets ect., more merchandise being sold, all kindsa shit, BUT under the new salary cap or w/e arrangement there ends up being...there's not much room to boost that players salary, because there's all those other players to try to keep happy as well, and as a result the owner keeps the extra $$$ that shoulda went to the player that had the standout season. how is it fair that some fat cat bastard owner would get to keep money that somebody went out and worked his ass off for night in and night out? i don't think any of you would like it if it happened to you, and don't give me the old "they're lucky to play hockey for a living blah blah blah", because pro hockey is big business, and has been for a long time, it didn't just become a multi-billion dollar world-wide industry out of the blue. just because you had childhodd fantasies of playing in the nhl for whatever your favourite team was, and they didn't come true, doesn't mean you're entitled to be bitter and envious towards the players that play the game we love. people try to label the players as greedy, and as thinking that they're bigger than the game, and that is not true (there might be some who are tha way, but that still doesn't make it right to categorize the whole lot of them along side the rotten one). the players can't be bigger than the game or vice versa..BECAUSE THE PLAYERS ARE THE GAME...and not just the nhl players, everyone who's played everywhere, we all do it for the same reason, because we love to play, BUT seeing as it's some people's job to play, they wanted to be paid fairly. i will say this: there is no league that is bigger than the game, and if the union stands its ground, there is no way the league will win a battle in which their gameplan is to stop the greatest collective of hockey players in the world today from competing, because the truth is, people still want to watch hockey, just not today's NHL, which is a shame, because of the league's rich history, and tradition of great hockey. and if people have to, eventually they'll start turning to other sources for their hockey fix, it's already happening with the rise in popularity of the CHL, and the Elite Leagues in Europe. I'm not saying the Swedish Elite League will take over everything, or anything silly like that, BUT, eventually something will catch on, it's only a matter of time. the only people who really have a lot to those are the players close to retirement, who'll lose the chance to compete again, but if they've made it this far, chances are they've had a pretty good career. they won't be forgotten by the fans that've idolized them for so long, or by the league in which they played their careers in.