Winter Classic Event close to being cancelled by League -NHL Lockout Update
The annual National Hockey League (NHL) Winter Classic event is one of those few occasions which hockey fans look so desperately forward to every single year, but 2013 might not have one at all with the league close to cancelling it.
Team owners, the league and Players’ Association failed to reach an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, in order to bring the deadlock between them to an end, and as the Winter Classic date closes in, cancelling seems like the only option
available for them.
Scheduled for January 1st, to kick off the New Year with a bang, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings were set to play in front of a historic crowd of over 100,000 thousand diehard fans at Michigan Stadium, but as November arrives, the
NHL is preparing to face another monumental loss.
"All I can say is it's something everyone around here, not just players, but fans and plenty of people around Michigan and Toronto, have been looking forward to," said Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall, a co-player representative for the NHLPA, according
to DetroitNews.com. "There was a big buildup and it's one of the highlights of the season.
Despite the tensions between the two stakeholders, members of both sides are still hopeful that they may be able to work something out by then.
"Hopefully we can get something done so we can get to play. You don't get a chance to do that (play in the Winter Classic) very often," Kronwall added.
Not cancelling it would result in a major amount needing to be paid, amounting to millions of dollars just to organise the event and seeing how the labour crisis between the NHL and Players’ Association persists, not going through with it is the only way
out. A $100,000 deposit is already believed to have been made for the stadium, which will not be given back in case of a cancellation.
For now, the stadium management is still preparing for the event, which is just two months away now, as they have reportedly not have been given a final answer from the league as of yet.
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