My thoughts exactly.

OK, I lied. It came down to $6.5 million dollars. The league wanted a cap of $42.5 million. The players finally offered $49 million. They finally offered to accept a cap. They caved on all of their demands. And the owners still weren't satisfied. Those soulless fucks. I may never watch the NHL again, even if it comes back in some form.

Sorry, man. That sucks.

The players offered a cap and they rejected it???? Arghhhh!!!!!!!!!

$6.5 million is all that stood in the way of having some kind of hockey season this year?! Those bastards!!

Actually, it is $195 million, $6.5 million per team. Still, that is more than 10 times less than the amount the league said it was losing before AND the players were still offering to roll back their current contracts 24%. It is all a matter of semantics... err, rather stupidity. :-P

Except that the $6.5 million wouldn't have affected all 30 teams. After the 24% rollback, the average payroll would have been $33.95 million. Only seven teams had payrolls that would be over the players' proposed cap after the rollback, and their average payroll was $52 million. The average payroll for the other 23 teams would be $20.8 million after the rollback. Does anyone think that those 23 teams would suddenly start spending their money freely on payroll and bump up against either proposed cap, $42.5 or $49 million? I fucking doubt it.

Excellent point.