...but are still accurate nonetheless.

With Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in attendance, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association met for 6 ½ hours in New York Saturday, but the talks failed to generate a new collective bargaining agreement to save the 2004-05 season.

The latest deal offered to the players reportedly was worse than the league’s ‘final offer’ last Tuesday before NHL commissioner Gary Bettman cancelled the season Wednesday leading some to believe Saturday’s get-together was Bettman’s way of trying to impress upon the players things will only get worse as time goes on without a new deal.

“We are much farther apart than everybody thought we were on Tuesday,” said NHLPA executive member Ted Saskin.

From Mike Brophy of The Hockey News

Talk about making a terrible situation out of a bad situation. It's almost as if the NHL and NHLPA are trying to draft the definitive blueprint on how not to negotiate effectively.

And that leads me to just one question: When does the Arena Football League overtake the National Hockey League in popularity among Americans? That might have been a laughable proposition a couple of years ago, but no longer. The AFL has a national TV contract with a network, NBC, while the NHL doesn't, and its contract with ESPN is in grave jeopardy.

I only wish I had enough money to buy an AFL team; I suspect it would prove to be a pretty wise investment. Just consider the foresight of those who purchased AFL teams back in 1996: Since that time, the average value of AFL teams has skyrocketed from $400,000 to $16 million (i.e., a rather jarring value escalation of 3,900 percent), and expansion franchises now fetch $20 million to be shared among existing owners. That sure sounds like a better investment than buying a team in another league which I will leave nameless.

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