[Fidatelo]

I'd also love to see a stoppage. I'd honestly like to see the whole thing blown up. Start from scratch with some realistic salary levels in cities that actually care, even when their team isn't necessarily winning.

It's funny, people always mention how the NFL has the best system, but that it can't truly be copied because no other league has the TV revenues like they do. But beyond the revenue sharing, the other thing the NFL's salary cap structure creates is the much talked-about 'parity', and this is where fans really win. In the NFL, every fan in almost every city can be optomistic on day 1, because almost every team has a realistic shot at making a run. And even the teams that are rebuilding can do so in a relatively short period of time (assuming their management isn't full of boneheads).

In the NHL, if you aren't one of the elite teams, your chances of becoming one are slim. The same 6 or 7 teams dominate every year, because they can simply sign all the good players and all the good players want to play for them. Even when the other teams decide they have the money to spend, it's still hard to attract big names because the big names would rather play for a winner now, not sometime in the future.

If the NHL wants to be succesful, they need to do the following:

1) Institute a salary cap. And not something stupid like in basketball or the crap they have in baseball. A nice, hard, cap.
2) Institute a salary floor. Just like there shouldn't be any New York Rangers spend-a-thons, there shouldn't be any Pittsburgh Penguins sell-everything-that's-not-tied-down-a-thons either.
3) Get rid of guaranteed contracts. Theo Fleury, you better be listening. Umm, you too CuJo.
4) Implement a "franchise player" tag similar to the NFL's

Of course, will this ever happen? No. In the end, I suspect the owners will fold just like they always do.