"Overpaid many of them may be, but are National Hockey League players on solid ground or on thin ice in their showdown with team owners that has been brewing for years? The owners claim they are losing millions of dollars annually due to the escalating player salaries brought by free agency. They are threatening to lock the players out of NHL arenas for the entire 2004-2005 season if necessary to force them to accept a salary cap or other form of wage restraint as exists in every other major North American sports league. For their part, the players are dubious about the claims of financial ruin being made by owners because they've heard that song before. They believed it when it wasn't true, and as a result for many years NHLers earned by far the lowest salaries of major league athletes. Now that they're caught up to and passed the average salary paid to players in the National Football League, even if they still trail their contemporaries in basketball and baseball, NHL players are reluctant to give back their hard-fought gains. They want to keep the free market system as it is and they point out that nobody forces owners to pay inflated salaries for free agents. The last time push came to shove in this dispute a decade ago, the owners canceled half the season without getting the "cost certainty"; they are still seeking. This time they're promising to wipe out the entire year, which has many players signing on to play with teams in Europe this season. Could this be the death of the NHL? The peculiar economics of professional sports and the experience of owners and players in other leagues provide some insights into the 2004 hockey brawl." -- courtesy New Star Books.