If you want to have an impact regarding the NHL lockout, ignore it

A long while ago I posted a piece here that acknowledged my confusion as to why fans boo certain athletes.  I get that fans don’t like certain guys, sure, but my broader point is a bit off to the side on this one.

Some of you will remember that Bobby Orr (in my view the finest player I’ve ever seen) used to get booed regularly in Toronto.  (Leaf followers of that era also well recall that we have booed “our own” over the years, including one of the best players of all-time, Frank Mahovlich, but that’s a different story. Larry Murphy and Bryan McCabe got the same treatment in more recent times…) Bobby Hull heard a lot of boos over the years at Maple Leaf Gardens.  A bit later, so did Guy Lafleur.

When the Flyers morphed into the Broad Street Bullies in the early 1970s, we booed them as well.

But I’ve often wondered, why?  To me, if you really want to show your distaste for something, ignore it.  So if we really wanted to send a “message” or  “get into Orr’s head” (as if that was ever going to happen...), we should have just sat back and said—and did—nothing.  No reaction at all.  Like we don’t even notice he was there, if you know what I mean.

It was the same with the Flyers.  They loved being booed.  It’s like being the villain in wrestling.  They thrive on it.  It makes good theatre and they gain notoriety and fame—and a nicer paycheck.

Which brings me to the current NHL situation, labour dispute, lockout, impasse, whatever we want to call it this week.  To me, the more we, as fans, belabour the idea that the players or owners somehow “owe” us a game (they really don’t), the better off we’ll be.  When we moan (and most of us have done it, if we're honest) that there’s no hockey, what are we going to do without hockey, etc., it simply plays into Bettman’s and Fehr’s hands.  They well know that, in Canadian markets at least, we are a ‘captive audience’.  We talk about the 1972 Summit Series and the ’87 Canada Cup like those things happened yesterday.  I mean, how more needy could we seem?

So yes, as I have posted here, I’m sure most Americans don’t even know there is an NHL “lockout”—and I’m including many cities where there is an NHL franchise—and if they do know, they could not possibly care less.  Clearly, this "business" disruption is about smaller market teams/franchises/owners and the issues those organizations face.  If it was up to the Rangers, Leafs, Red Wings (Jimmy Devellano's recent comments aside) and Flyers, I'm guessing training camp would already be in full swing.  But it’s a 30-team (should be 24, but what do I know?) partnership, and I don’t mean with the players.

I do wish, on a side note, that both sides would not bother with videos, statements, and all the standard public relations tactics that just mask how silly and incredibly shallow and selfish both sides are in this dispute.

The owners claim they "care" about the fans.  Who's kidding who?

Of course the players would continue to play (and get paid) while they negotiate.  Why wouldn't they?

I know the players figure the owners are all dumb as a post (hard to argue, sometimes) since they hand out all those absurd contracts, but they aren’t that stupid. When a  team's owners don’t fork out to pay for good players, fans complain- loudly.  The owners can’t collude, so what can they do if they want to “compete”? They're caught in a spiral and can't get out.  It has to stop somewhere and they are trying, it seems, to draw a line in the sand- as they did in 2005.

(An aside:  why would Maple Leaf goalie James Reimer, who is utterly unproven at the NHL level, allow himself to take part in an NHLPA sympathy video like he did?  I like Reimer a lot, on and off the ice, as I’ve said here many times.  But he may be playing in the East Coast League before long.  I’m not sure that he should be a torch-bearer on this one…)

Anyway, I don’t want to get knee-deep in all this negative-sounding stuff today.   I’ve come to see that we will just end up fighting amongst ourselves.  If you are a “labour” person, you likely will sympathize with and support the players, though what they have in common with the everyday working person like myself and many others is beyond me.  I just can't summon up the concern.  They sure don’t have any for us, or for those workers who really depend on NHL hockey for a lot of their income.  

I realize that others look at things differently than I do.  That said, some observers, like myself, while they don’t exactly support the greedy owners, they do think the players have had it swell for a long, long time and could stand a little more of a reality check.

Regardless of where any of us stand on the issues that divide the two sides, I’ve heard of suggestions for petitions, boycotts, Twitter “unfollow” protests and a range of well-intended efforts to let both sides know that fans aren’t happy and want hockey back.

To me, the best thing we could do is ignore them. That really would send a message.

It won’t happen, but our silence would be the most powerful thing we could “do” to let everyone involved know that we can live without them (and we obviously can—we’ve done it before).

Once they realize that, it changes the landscape and both sides would maybe, just maybe, have to deal with a different reality.