Flipping The Canary In the Puck Mine

When Life Gives You A Pickle...

Well, it looks like the National Hockey League is about to cancel the entire season. While this is sad for hockey fans, and seemingly a death-blow to hockey-related bric-a-brac manufactures and merchandisers, it represents an "opportunity" for players. That's right. Whether you lose your job as a result of downsizing or an intractable (and satanic) labor union, the closing of one door is inevitably offset by the opening of another. Deprived of the snug confines of the N.H.L., players should look to the achievements of their colleagues from the wider world of sport: Arena Football, the XFL, Extreme Ironing, and Bum Fights. See, it's important that members of modern unions realize that they no longer live in the days when a single job determined whether a man would be able to put food on his family.

Union? Fuck it. I'm Dead.

Yes, those pioneers of the labor union paved the road to your financial security with their cracked heads and busted kneecaps, but that was a different time. The modern world has revealed the sinister truth about unions: they hold men back and corrosively retard their imaginations. This watershed moment in sports affords a fresh opportunity for toothless Hockey brutes from across the land to slip off their skates, leave the arena, rub the gunk from the corners of their eyes, and disperse like locusts into the pulpy heart of America to create the next big thing. As someone who derives no pleasure from watching sports, I am spared the deep feelings of betrayal and loss that fans are subjected to when their beloved franchises pack up their kneepads and go home. Nevertheless, I can understand their pain; even if only in the abstract. Hockey fans will be disappointed this year. Forlorn. Disoriented. In their delirium they will surely blame the "greed" of players. In one sense, they'd be right to do so: like their coal mining brethren of yore, they ought to thank their lucky stars that The Company was there to provide for their needs. As I always say, ask not what he who moved your cheese can do for you, but what you can do for he who moved your cheese. At least that's how I choose to view the situation. Otherwise, I'd have to defend the position of the players union and that just wouldn't be right. Owners of professional sports teams are never wrong. Never.

ADDENDUM: Minor caption edit. Oh, and I'm a sarcastic bastard.