We’re 39 days into this lockout and the players have evidently exhausted their supply of metaphors.
Jason Chimera recently questioned the league’s willingness to make a deal while speaking to CSNWashington.
“Maybe they’re looking at the season like an advent calendar – like Christmas is coming and they’re taking their chocolates out one day at a time,” Chimera said. “And when the big chocolate comes they make a proposal.”
Chimera hopes that the, uh, “big chocolate,” is an 82-game season, but he doesn’t “know if they seriously want that as a group.”
It seems reasonable to assume that the league actually does want an 82-game season, just like the players do. That’s never been the issue. The issue is that neither side is currently willing to accept the other’s offer for the sake of preserving a full schedule.
Chimera reiterated the union’s position that it has interest in meeting with the league. However, the NHL doesn’t want to meet up because, as NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly put it in a CSN Chicago report, “The Union has rejected the proposal we made last Tuesday and is not offering another one. We see nothing to be gained at this point by meeting just to meet.”
Meanwhile, the lockout drags on with the fans just hoping that by Christmas time, the NHL will have more to offer them than coal.