Hit The Road, Gary (And Don’t You Come Back No More)

October 11, 2009

According to a new NHL Fans’ Association poll, it’s time for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to go. I suppose that this means I was ahead of the curve.

The NHL decided to lock its players out for the 2004-05 season about two months after my buddy Charlie Tuttle and I purchased season tickets. Needless to say, we were a little miffed. I eventually canceled my tickets and wrote a letter to Craig Leipold, the man who then owned the Predators (and who was also instrumental in getting the lockout going), telling him why I was no longer going to let him hang on to my money. I also called for the NHL to sack its commissioner, the aformentioned Gary Bettman, who was even then in the process of running the NHL so far into the ground that even Major League Soccer got more respect than the fastest game on earth.

A few weeks after Charlie died, the NHL and its players finally worked out an agreement to get back to the ice. Great timing, boys! I went to two games at the beginning of the 2005-06 season but it just wasn’t the same without Charlie there. I also hated the idea of giving any more of my money to two organizations run by men who preferred scorched-earth tactics to finding a workable solution. So, I stopped paying attention to hockey altogether. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Bettman’s league was looking for, but it’s what they got.

I’ve only watched a handful of games on television since that time, and I haven’t been to a single one in person. But if the NHL decides to sack Bettman, I promise here and now that I’ll buy a 10-game pack for the 2009-10 Predators season. I’d love to have a reason to catch live hockey again, NHL. Make it happen.

The post Hit The Road, Gary (And Don’t You Come Back No More) by Jason Kirk, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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