Steve Burton, Bill Daly and Why The NHL Lockout Isn’t Over

 

If you've been living under a rock yesterday, here's the tweets that WBZ here in Boston sent out yesterday evening: 

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Here's Burton on WBZ last night:

After the jump, the rest of it…

This one tweet got the Twitterverse in a massive shit throwing contest, most of it heading towards the way of Steve Burton himself. A lot of people were asking "Well who the hell is Steve Burton?" and saying "TSN hasn't even reported it yet!". I'm not going to confirm nor deny what anyone is saying. I have my own thoughts about the whole thing, but Burton has reported Bruins news before. Check out my buddies at Garden Gremlins, they lay it out for you

Here is my problem with everything. As my friend Coachssister put it, the NHL Lockout is the "royal baby" of the sporting world right now. People are going to start rumors of projected dates in hopes that they are right so they can put their stamp on "breaking the news first" (a huge thing in journalistic circles, for some reason). It's akin to the Kate Middleton story that she's pregnant. Just because she's pregnant, doesn't mean the baby is going to pop out any quicker, but the tabloids will still guess at the sex of the baby, hoping to be right and put their stamp on "breaking the news first". They're just throwing darts at the dart board, while blindfolded, hoping to hit the bullseye. 

Bill Daly has said to multiple people in the media that Burton's report is false. Here's some of it from Pro Hockey Talk

The hockey world was abuzz Monday when WBZ’s Steve Burton reported that the NHL could announce a CBA agreement as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday, but Bill Daly stomped the rumor out to Sports Illustrated’s Sarah Kwak.

Daly told Kwak that “not a single morsel” of the scuttlebutt was true and expanded upon that thought with TVA’s Patrick Caisse.

“I’m aware of the reports making the rounds,” Daly said. “Unfortunately, there is no truth to them.”

This could be a ploy from Daly, who is the Deputy Commissioner and chief legal officer of the NHL, but if that was the case why would players and managers still be meeting? If the NHL/PA has truly come to an agreement, what's the need for the owners/players to get together today? 

My final point on the subject revolves around Dan Paille, the Bruins' NHLPA representative. Ryan Durling made a good point with Dan Paille leaving for Finland yesterday. Why would the Bruins NHLPA rep leave the country? It's something to think about. 

I'll be honest, I hope I'm wrong with this whole post and you can throw it right in my face, but until there's substantial evidence regarding this lockout, I'm going to remain pessimistically optimistic. 

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