A Petition to Save the Hockey Season

In this age of social media and going viral in an instant, the latest lockout news was not made by Commissioner Gary Bettman, NHLPA chief Donald Fehr, or any of the other movers and shakers who could bring us hockey.  Or was it?  Janne Makkonen, a 21-year-old freelance video editor from Finland, may help make the fan's vote heard.  He took to YouTube to provide some inspiration in a video titled "Together We Can" and created a petition for all of us to try to do the same.

See the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQs3O_IDas
Sign the petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/gary-bettman-the-nhl-save-the-hockey-season-nolockout

I'll tell you this, it's inspiring.  I signed the petition and this is my reason for why this potential lockout is important to me:

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Hockey, like any sport, marks the time.  The time was marked by greed between Fall 2004 and Summer 2005.  As much as people swore off the sport, people came back because the product was better.  Some people never returned.  With each work stoppage, more and more people will turn off hockey forever.  More will never attend another game.  More will move on to other things and spend their hard-earned money on something else.  Hockey, as in all sports, is a diversion from real life.  When real life greed permeates the great game of hockey, people get disillusioned.  How much more will we take before everyone just finds something else to do?

I get that everyone has to make a living, that this is a business, and one of the primary goals is to make money.  But, it is not the only goal.  The Stanley Cup stands for more than just money.  It is a legacy.  It is tradition.  It is pride.  Sadly, the hockey establishment has failed in all three areas.  Commissioner Bettman's legacy will be that of untold profits for the owners and sky-high ticket prices, while work stoppages have dotted the landscape.  The tradition of awarding a Stanley Cup every year since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919 was halted in 2005.  So much for tradition.  The pride of the owners, and the players, have brought us to the precipice of another work stoppage and a possibility of missing most or all of yet another season.

Hockey does mark the time and I am hoping the next few months will be marked with the puck on the ice instead of lawyers in board rooms.