Penguins, Lemieux disappointed NHL season cancelled

Thursday, February 17, 2005
By Dave Molinari, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mark Recchi of the Penguins never believed it would come to this.
Not when so many stood to lose so much.

Not until the moment yesterday when he heard NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announce that the 2004-05 season has been canceled because the league and its players could not settle on a collective bargaining agreement.

"I'm terribly disappointed," Recchi said. "I don't understand how it got to this. Well, I do understand, but I always thought there was something there both sides could work to obtain. I still believed to the last minute."

So did Mario Lemieux, Recchi's teammate and the Penguins' primary owner.

"I always thought that, at the end of the day, there would be a deal made," Lemieux said. "As [late] as this morning, I thought the two sides would get together before [Bettman's] press conference and make a deal."

That didn't happen, of course, and some of the Penguins' accountants probably were a bit relieved. Because if the NHL Players' Association had accepted the league's final offer, which featured a salary cap of $42.5 million, the Penguins might have ended up operating at a loss, at least for a while.

Full article here:

[link|http://www.post-gaze.../05048/458815.stm|http://www.post-gaze.../05048/458815.stm] [*]

Brenda
Nightowl >8#

I've liked him since 1989. And I'm not even in Pittsburgh. ;)

I miss hockey too. Nothing else works quite as good for me to relieve stress than listening to or watching a great hockey game.

It's gonna be a long boring rest of winter.

Brenda
Nightowl >8#