A labor of shenanigans

 Well, that didn't take long. Surprise, surprise.

Two days after the Fort Wayne Komets and the rest of the ECHL's workforce went on strike, the supposedly unresolvable conflict between the league and the Professional Hockey Players Association was resolved. It was magic, I tell you, magic!

Or, you know, not.

Actually it was your typical labor/management shenanigans, which have a long and splendidly phony history. The players demand changes. The owners plead poverty. The players say, bullpucky, you're sitting on more dough than the GNP of Luxembourg, and we're not getting our cut. The owners say the players aren't bargaining in good faith; the players says, nuh-uh, it's the owners who aren't bargaining in good faith,.

And yada-yada, bluster-bluster, everyone follows the well-trodden path. 

The players go on strike.

The owners say it's a damn shame, especially for the fans -- whom they've been sticking it to for years with their king's ransom parking, $200 nosebleeds and $15 Bud Lights, but never mind that now. The fans are getting screwed! By those greedy players!

And then ...

And then, after awhile (or after two days, in this case), everyone sits down and hammers out the deal they likely could have hammered out months ago had everyone not been play-acting for the public and the media.

Now, I don't know if that's exactly how it all went down here. I'm just blue-skyin' it, to be perfectly honest. And so I also don't know if perhaps it only took two days to resolve everything because a few of the players publicly criticized the PHPA -- suggesting there were many more players who weren't happy with the union, either, but just weren't saying so.

Be that as it may, if it only took two days to settle this dispute once the players walked, how much of a dispute could it actually have been? And why couldn't they have settled it before the players walked?

One man's conclusion: They could have. As usual. 

Surprise, surprise.