By Kyle Zamiara
Promotions Editor
As September comes to a close, NHL fans will be dreading an October with no puck drops. That’s right, the league is once again in a lockout.
It didn’t seem so long ago when the league locked out for what felt like eternity in the 2004-05 season. I had never watched so much basketball and bowling in my life until that winter.
Fans, players and owners are not the only ones affected by the lockout. Community members depend on 82 hockey games a season to help their businesses. That’s 41 home games where a restaurant or bar fills up because not everyone has the money for season tickets. Even opposing teams fans’ look for places to eat, drink and sleep. When the Maple Leafs come to town, Toronto fans fill up about a third of the First Niagara Center, and bring plenty of business to local hotels and pubs.
A Sept. 24 article on Philly.com said, “Based on numbers surrounding a franchise as similarly successful as the Flyers – the Boston Bruins – the lockout would probably cost area businesses close to $1 million per Flyers home game.
Restaurant owners in Boston also voiced their opinion in a Sept. 15 article in the Boston Herald saying, “No matter what happens from a development standpoint in the area, nothing’s going to replace a Bruins-Canadians game on a Saturday night,”’ said Bill Fairweather, owner of The Greatest Bar, a bar close to TD Garden where the Bruins play. “We’re a hockey bar, and we depend on these games for the livelihood for our business.”’
Fortunately for Boston, they have the Celtics to fill the Garden. Other cities, like Buffalo, aren’t so lucky.
In 2004, the Cobblestone bar in Buffalo, near what then was HSBC arena, lost 60 percent of its business, according to a Dec. 9, 2004 article in the New York Times. Owner Marisa Milbrand could no longer serve draft beer at her bar because the kegs would go bad before they were emptied.
They’ll probably be looking to tap their final kegs in the coming weeks.
I can’t take sides with the owners or the players because, honestly, they’re both making millions. They need to realize this sport is more meaningful to a city than them putting another BMW in their garage.
Even in Minnesota, a hockey hot spot in America, business owners are troubled with the possibility of no season.
Duane French, a bartender at Eagle Street Grille near the Xcel Energy Center, said income will decrease vastly.
“We’re usually packed with wall-to-wall people when there’s a game, but that will change,” French said in a Sept. 16 article on Kare11.com.
If the Sabres aren’t allowed to play this season, Buffalo could latterly become a ghost town this winter. What else is going to convince people to come out of their cozy homes during a harsh Buffalo winter?
With the season scheduled to begin on Oct. 11, owners and players need to find an answer on splitting $3.3 billion. According to Kare11.com, Players receive about 57 percent of that right now, but owners are looking to lower that by 10 percent. Sympathizing with either side is pointless because as fans, we’re the ones pouring our money into the sport. I understand the players need to make a living, but $1,881,000,000 a year should be enough to spread around.
The last lockout even hit home with college students who got their hours cut short. Erin Bullwinkle, who worked at Pearl Street Grill and Brewery in Buffalo during the 2004-05 lockout said she had to look for jobs elsewhere because of the loss of shifts, reported the New York Times.
‘”I’m extremely angry,’” Bullwinkle said. “The fans pay their wages, and who’s going to want to come and see them if they don’t understand how they’re hurting us?”’
There’s still time for the two sides to make a decision. If not, looks like another fun-filled winter of strikes, spares and gutter balls.
