Bobby Orr might have a few horses in the lockout race - he’s a powerful agent, after all - but it’s still worth hearing what he had to say to The Globe & Mail’s James Mirtle.
“They have to accept that responsibility to sit down and get a deal done,” Orr said. “Shame on them if they don’t do that.”
Orr doesn’t seem to back up the notion that the league will bounce back easily from a lost season.
“How could it not hurt us?” Orr said. “I mean, there are the owners and the players, but think about some of the other people. Even the Hall of Fame, they’re being hurt by this. You go to the buildings, the restaurants and so on, the shops around them - it’s more than just the players and the owners. There’s a lot of people hurt by this lockout.”
Even with some palpable bitterness in some of his quotes, Orr thinks last week’s run of meetings indicate that there’s a chance that action might pick up again around Dec. 1.
“I think this [week] is the longest they’ve met... and I feel better about what I’m hearing now than I have the last few months,” Orr said.